You don’t need the most expensive gear to produce professional photographs, but there are three things that are essential. You need a half decent camera, a good tripod and a wide-ish lens.
A Good Camera
For producing great real estate photography, you need a camera that enables you to change the aperture, exposure and ISO settings. It doesn’t matter if your camera is full frame, Sony, Canon, Nikon, none of that really – you just need to be able to adjust the settings.
I use a Canon 6d, I think this is a great camera to use for real estate photography, especially for the night shots, but many of the cheaper Canon cameras will work perfectly too.
The smaller Canon 80d would be a very good option if your budget is a bit lower.
New or second hand, it doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s in full working condition and doesn’t have any sign of being dropped or damaged.
A Solid Tripod
A good tripod is essential, as many of the shots you will take are going to be long exposure photos, so the camera needs to have exactly zero movement.
I use the Manfrotto 290 from NZ Camera (also available for a great price on Amazon HERE if you’re not in New Zealand).
My two favourite 2 Lenses
I never go to a job without these two lenses, and yes, they are very cheap lenses…
– The Samyang 14mm Wide Lens – A wide lens is important and this one is great because it has a low aperture (2.8).
There are a couple of downsides to this lens though: it’s fully manual, and it does suffer from some distortion.
Being fully manual, you’ll need to learn to manually adjust the aperture and focus in order to get great shots, but learning this will make you a much better photographer. I’ll go through all of those details in a later blog post.
The distortion from this lens means we need to shoot from angles that suit the lens, but these are the best angles any. There will also be some distortion repair techniques in Lightroom that I’ll show you in a future video. SEE IT HERE
– The Canon 50mm f1.8 – The newer STM version of this lens is far better than the older version, and they are also very cheap. This lens gives amazing depth of field and really adds drama to your photographs, but more about that in a future post. SEE IT HERE
Want to know how to become a real estate photographer?
If you’re like me, you’ll take any excuse to use your camera. I love it when someone sets me the challenge to get some nice shots, and it’s even better if I’m paid for is! That’s why I love real estate photography.
Join my FREE course and I’ll show you all you need to know, to help you get out and about, using your camera to help people sell their properties.
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