Shooting With An Ultra Wide Angle For Real Estate
Cropped with slightly converging verticals
Not Shooting for Real Estate? I’ll cover using an Ultra Wide Angle for Fun later this week.
I bought my 12 -24mm Nikor lens back when they were just at $1000. The response at the time was “FOR A LENS? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?“ I wasn’t.
It was time to take our real estate photos where they needed to be. This could only be accomplished with a super wide angle.
Shooting Ultra Wide and Converging Verticals
You can get in amazingly close with an ultra wide angle and get the room that otherwise wouldn’t be worth trying to capture. Why? It would look to narrow and small. We all know you don’t sell a house by making it look narrow and small, even if you describe it as “cozy”.
There are always to sides to everything. The thing you have to watch with an ultra wide are converging verticals. This is one lens that DEMANDS to be level. If it isn’t the walls won’t be straight. Not only does it need to be level it should be shot straight as possible in a room. “But the room looks bigger from the corner”. Yes it does, and you won’t find a straight line in your shot making the room look like it was built by a blind carpenter without a level.
Maybe all those horrible virtual tours with the bowed walls and ceiling lines have desensitized all to the effects of things looking surreal. But if you want to have your photos even considered as acceptable among the real estate photographers you have to learn to control converging verticals.
Don’t shoot below 14mm
Yes the lens goes to 12, but anything below 14mm will distort the walls and make the room look even bigger than it is. “But that’s what I want”! You might think that is what you want, but it isn’t. You want an “Accurate” representation of the home.
Do you ever shoot at 12mm? Yes I do. Sometimes, usually outdoors, I will get in as close as I can and shoot at 12mm to get the entire front or back of a house. Outdoors, the distortion isn’t as noticeable. Not as many lines from all four directions. Also, I will use post processing to remove lens distortion from the final image.
Be Prepared to Crop
Most of the time when shooting with an Ultra Wide you will get a lot more sky and foreground than you want in the image. Cropping either top, bottom, or both parts of an image will greatly enhance it’s appearance.
check out this thumbnail image which is the original image before cropping. A lot of sky and a lot of parking lot, neither of which were necessary.
An Ultra Wide Angle lens will produce great interior shot results. Is it expensive? You know it is? Is it worth the expense? Yes, it is. You will get more listings with great photos, you will get great photos with an Ultra Wide Angle.
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The wide angle does make all the difference when shooting houses. I have a 10-22 Canon. Is that considered an “ultra wide?” Should I still not shoot below 14?
P.S. Please stop taking pictures of restaurants. It makes me hungry.
The one of the Red Lobster had me thinking of shrimp and biscuits!
Kristal,
Yes, since we are both shooting with a 3/4 frame sensor anything below 14mm is considered Ultra Wide. I really try to stay at the 14mm mark when shooting interiors. But those small bathrooms sometimes scream, WIDE OPEN. I usually give in.
Oh, I have a whole line of eateries coming up. El Charro Cafe, Oldest Mexican Food place in Tucson. Yum, (I don’t eat Mexican).
She is right too many restaurants. I am going to play with my wide angle some more. I have a love hate relationship with it. I bought it for real estate photography, it was expensive and I would like to get more use out of it.
I love these lenses! When I do quick photo scans of a property, it helps using these lenses. Especially outside when I do window counts for renovation estimates. While most are slightly distorted, kitchen and bathroom shots are helpful also rather than have two or three for quick review.
The biggest challenge is finding the right spot to click in tight spaces.