Quality of photos on your site

[Rich@vtws]

Hello all,

Thanks to Jebner I've got some new topics to open up here

When it comes to providing listing photos on your sites, How many photos do you provide for each listing? and what steps do you take to make sure they are the best they can be? Are you relying on yourself or your agents or do you feel it is important enough to outsource the photos and editing.

[IGotRealEstate]

Rich- My thoughts are that virtual tours are the only thing to be outsourced. The goal is to have the property sold before pics are posted

[Mauirealestatepete]

I would say people would achieve better results with their photos if they took 5-10 minutes of time instead of the 2 seconds some people tend to allocate. 1)Try to take pictures on sunny days. 2)Turn on the lights. Make sure your subject matter is well lit. 3)If your using digital and the picture looks poor, delete the picture and take it from a new angle.

Some things won't photograph that well. Unless it is a feature that you or the owner have to have on the Internet, don't include the pic.

[tim]

The best thing that has helped me is my slightly wide angle lens. It's the equivalent of a 27mm lens which allows you to get just a little bit more of the rooms into the pictures without distorting the image in any way. It's tough finding simple small digital camera like that but there are a few. I got mine 5 years ago, a Canon Power Shot A50.

I use Microsoft Image Composer to enhance the photos. There's one tool in there that you can adjust the brightness of the various colors. I can usually take photos in any conditions and make them look like they were taken on a sunny day with all the lights on. I also like to use the sharpen tool.

For homes with the driveway and garage facing the street, don't take the outside front shot straight on. You end up with a big ugly piece of concrete in the foreground and the garage staring you in the face. Try taking it from a slight side angle with the driveway and garage the furthest away from you.

[Jim Messenger]

I had a Canon PowerShot A5 for about three years. I found that when using the wide angle lens you could not use the flash or else you got a shadow on the bottom right of the picture.

To solve this I bought a Canon G3 with an External Flash (Speedlight 420ex) and a wide angle lens (parts La-DC58B & WC-DC58N 0.7x)

I can highy recommend this set up.

Jim

[FredLight]

I've found it best to use panaramic photos. They aren't distorted like Virtual tours, yet still give the overall feel of a room. In addition, you can actually take some decent photos of small rooms.

It's done by taking a series of photos on a tripod and stitching them together. Canon digital cameras come with PhotoStitch, which works like a charm. Also Photoshop CS has PhotoMerge, which does the same thing as well.

The results are great photos! An example: Panoramic Photos

[IGotRealEstate]

So we all talked about how to take quailty photos.. Where can we find quality photos? Does anyone know of any sites or resources?

[Rich@vtws]

Just google "royalty free photos" and start sifting

[IGotRealEstate]

Rich... I said High quality....Not Free Quailty LOL

[Rich@vtws]

fear not my friend..royalty free does not equal free I assure you