When you are choosing a camera to use for real estate photography there are two key considerations:

1. Does the camera have or can you adapt it to have a wide-angle lens?
2. Can the camera be used easily with an external flash?

These two factors are so important that almost nothing else matters.

What’s a wide-angle lens?

First of all let’s agree that when talking about lenses that we use the standard terminology of 35mm equivalent focal lengths. This is important because the magnification of a lens depends not only on the focal length but on the size of the sensor in a camera and digital cameras have different size sensors. Note that the smaller the focal length the wider angle of view a lens has. So 24mm is wide-angle and 16mm is ultra-wide-angle.

For real estate interior work, you need a lens that has a focal length of at least 24mm and even better if it is as wide as 16mm. The best of all worlds is a zoom lens that covers the area between about 16mm and 35mm. If you look at the standard lenses that off-the-shelf cameras come with most are no where near this wide. Most come with a 35mm lens or maybe 28mm but almost never as wide as 24mm. Of course the need for having a lens that “sees” this wide is obvious; you are working in tight spaces and you can just backup to get everything in the photo. When you shoot with a 35mm lens inside a home as so many Realtors do the photos come out tight and cramped feeling.

To get a lens that has a wide enough view for interiors you can either buy a ultra-wide-angle lens if the camera is a DSLR allowing interchangeable lenses or for compact camera with built-in lenses you can screw on a wide-angle adapter. The problem is not all compact (non-DSLRs) cameras accommodate a wide-angle adapter. Here is a list of camera/lens/flashes that meet my recommendation of at least 24mm and work with an external flash. Recently, the price of DSLRs has been dropping quite rapidly so my recommendation to Realtors is to not even fool around with compact cameras; use a DSLR like the Nikon D40 or a Canon Digital Rebel XTi and get a Sigma 10-20mm Ultra-wide zoom, which is available for either Nikon or Canon DSLRs. Because of the sensor size on these DSLRs the D40 used with a Sigma 10-20mm will be a 35mm equivalent of 15-30mm zoom and the XTi when used with a Sigma 10-20mm will be a 35mm equivalent of 16-32mm zoom. Either one of these combinations are a good choice for real estate shooters. Hundreds of Realtor photographers and professional real estate photographers are using one of these combinations with good results.

Why you need an external flash

First of all, forget about using built-in flash units for interior photography. Built-in flashes are not powerful enough to fill a room with light, they are intended for relatively close up shots of people.

There are two schools of thought in interior photography. The natural light school says: use a tripod so you can use long exposure times and then do some post processing in Photoshop to make interior photos bright enough. An off-shoot of this school advocates High Dynamic Range (HDR) post processing with software like Photomatix to combine multiple exposures to get proper exposure of bright windows and dark corners.

The artificial lighting school says: use single or multiple flash units to control the light in the room so it is lit well when the shot is taken. With this approach usually very little post processing work is required to get good results.

Which approach you take depends on if you feel competent doing post processing or if you would rather spend some time learning how to light a room with flash. What I recommend for beginning real estate photographers is to start out with a automatic flash mounted on the hot shoe of the camera. Then, if you want to improve the look of your photos from there work at learning how to shoot with the flash off the camera and with multiple flashes. Automatic flash means purchasing a flash of the same brand as the camera. For example, if you have a Canon Digital Rebel XTi purchase a Canon 580ex flash (equivalent flash for Nikon D40 is Nikon SB-800). Both of these combinations have the ability to be set on automatic so the flash and camera body “talk” to each other and flash the right amount for the particular room. A large percentage of the time this will be all you need. As your photographic skills increase you will naturally want to get the flash off the camera and use more than one flash.

The examples below show what an automatic external flash can do. The first photo below is shot with no flash.

The second photo is taken a few seconds after the first with an on camera automatic flash. Notice how the colors are cleaner and brighter. The whole photo shot with a flash has more of bright crisp, clean look. The only obvious problem caused by the external flash is the reflection highlight on the TV screen. This is easily fixable in photo-editing software like Photoshop Elements or other similar photo-editors.

Which would you rather use on your listing?