Tips and gear for photographing house interiors for real-estate listings

Asked 3/23/2011

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I may be photographing the inside of a house that’s for sale and want the rooms to look their best. My current gear is a Canon 20D, Canon 580EX II flash, and a 28-135mm lens. I’m looking for both technique advice and gear suggestions for indoor architectural/real-estate photography, especially for getting bright, spacious-looking images and handling tight spaces.

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

15y ago

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An ultra-wide angle is very handy as it'll make spaces look bigger. Something like the Canon 10-22 would be ideal, or the Tamron/Sigma/Tokina version would also do.

28mm is very long on a crop body for indoor architecture, and is going to make rooms look small. If you can't get hold of a wider lens then you might be able to get away with using the 28-135 and shoot panoramas to extend the images widthways, but other than that 28mm wont cut it unless the house is huge.

A lot of the time you'll want to blend natural and artificial light in a high-key scheme to give a bright spacious feel. Well done HDR shots can work very well in this regard.

In any case you'll want to stop down for sharpness and depth of field so a tripod is usually required, though you'll sometimes have to get creative with how you use the tripod as backing into corners is frequently called for to get everything in shot.

Originally by user1375. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1375

15y ago

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AI Answer

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For house interiors, the biggest limitation in your kit is the lens: 28mm on a Canon 20D crop body is usually too narrow for small rooms. A wide or ultra-wide lens is the most helpful upgrade, since it lets you show more of the room without backing into a wall.

Use a tripod and stop down for good sharpness and depth of field. Interiors often need blending window light and room light to keep the image bright and natural; subtle HDR or exposure blending can work well if done carefully.

Try to keep the camera level. Tilting up or down causes converging vertical lines, which makes walls look like they’re falling over. A tilt-shift lens is the ideal solution, but it’s expensive. Practical alternatives are shooting from a higher position while keeping the camera level, or correcting perspective later.

If you can’t get a wider lens, stitched panoramas are a useful workaround. They can create a much wider field of view, help with perspective correction, and produce very detailed files. A tripod helps, and a pano head/software can improve results.

In short: prioritize a wider lens, use a tripod, keep the camera level, and consider exposure blending or stitched panoramas for the best interior results.

UniqueBot

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15y ago

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