Real Estate Photography 5D mkIII

[@!ex]

Do any of your clients gripe about the light and dark halos and shadows, as seen in your 3rd shot next to the windows and doorways...

No.  I try to keep halos and shadows to a minimum, although sometimes they still shine through.  A curse (and blessing at times) with the MLS system is that the images are displayed at a very small size and resolution when potential home buyers are searching.  For my clients to have 25 professional looking images posted for their home or listing it really sets their house apart from the homes with 3 crappy pics snapped with a smart phone. 

If my clients are looking to print anything of any size, I spend a little more time cleaning up images for print.

I will admit, that to keep my pricing fair and my turn-around time short I have set up a semi automatic workflow process that keeps my "hands on" editing to a minimum.  While the HDR artifacts are not completely absent the images do look quite clean for the most part and clients feel like they get good bang for the buck.

I understand where you are coming from when you mention time input with editing compared to income, so I try to provide the best product I can for a reasonable price.  On a typical 2,000 square foot home I spend about an hour shooting, let my computer batch process for an hour, and then about 40 min-60 min in post polishing the final HDR images.  Clients end up with about 35 photos depending on the house and grounds....

If you don't mind, how much do you charge?  I'm always trying to compare my rates to others (pm me if you feel more comfortable with that).

[@!ex]

If doing a multi RAW file HDR process then it is here.

PS I might add if you have the Canon GP-E2 (GPS device) then you want to download at least version 4.2.2 of Photomatix otherwise the GPS data is lost when 4.2.1 or earlier converts from RAW to JPG

Thanks rev.  As I suspected it only applies to RAW images, not the working space for JPEG, which is what probably 70% of my shots are.

[revup67]

@!ex..Interesting..just curious how come you split 70% JPG and 30% RAW?  I only shoot in RAW..far more control and it is the digital negative, JPG's are baked in settings.

[@!ex]

@!ex..Interesting..just curious how come you split 70% JPG and 30% RAW?  I only shoot in RAW..far more control and it is the digital negative, JPG's are baked in settings.

I shoot a tone of stuff, on a good day I shoot maybe 200 shots or more, especially if I am on vacation then maybe 6-700.  I changed the settings on my 5d mkiii so that the little function button next to the shutter button switches between RAW and JPEG.  I agree that RAW is the digital negative and has more options for pushing it if the exposure or white balance is a way off, but in my world I know when this might happen based on the shooting conditions.  If it is a really critical shot for a paid assignment and it is a very contrasty or difficult white balance scene, then I'll just hit my handy dandy custom little RAW button so I have saved all the info coming from the sensor unaltered.  Although about 70% of the time I honestly don't need that flexibility since I am either bracketing or just snapping away and the more freedom I feel shooting a ton of shots, the better chances I think I'll have of getting the best moment/composition.  If space was unlimited and I wanted to edit every single image to meet my needs (a necessity with RAW) then maybe I'd shoot more RAW, but I guess I'm an outlier among pro shooters because I think the freedom of shooting JPEG encourages more shots which leeds to more keepers.   I just find that even if I totally blow a shot shooting JPEG, I can still get it where I want with photoshop most of the time, and if I feel that the dynamic range on a single exposure necessitates then I'll hit my  RAW button. 

[revup67]

well..that's an interesting theory.  I shoot only RAW cause then if the image is messed up I have a better chance of recovery (say I forgot to change the exposure from the last scene).  Have you ever used the recipe feature in DPP?  Quiet nice as if you have multiple shots from the same scene that all suffer from the same criteria (say under exposure) you can create a single recipe, save it then apply it to to a batch of images all at once, then do a batch process to convert to JPG then delete the RAWs and keep whatever JPG's you like.  I know you mentioned space but not sure if you are concerned about space on the camera or MAC/PC?  I take all my shots on a 32 gig CF card.  If on vacation I then do a "camera copy" to the spare SD card (less costly) then I have the 32 gig free again on the CF.  I found this to be economical without suffering from speed loss (writing to the card).  I rate all my pics and typically only keep the RAWs that are 5 star. So if I've got 8 RAW shots of a hummingbird, I might keep 4 as JPG's but only 1 or 2 RAWs of the best of the 8.  I can already see the 5D Mark III pics chewing away at my disk drive.

[canon816]

The problem I have with JPEG, other then the limited data it captures for a scene, is that every time you copy it, edit it, or save it the file is degraded and IQ suffers.  If its a one time job then JPEG might make sense, but if you are trying to create an amazing image and hope to refer back to it many times over the years then your image will break down over time if JPEG.  Also, as editing tech improves all that extra data in a DNG file can be exploited to improve your image....   DNG never degrades with copying, editing etc... It's timeless and a hedge that editing software in the future will be able draw more out of the data.   

Hard drive space is so cheap these days that the filesize of RAW does not bother me one bit.  Also, I cull images that I will never use or that were not as good as one that is similar or if it is OOF, etc...

The argument shooting JPEG over RAW due to Harddrive space is a silly one.  Our camera kits contain thousands of dollars worth of camera bodies, lenses and accessories.... yet it's too expensive to go to costco or best buy and drop $120 on 2 Terabytes of storage!?  Even CF and SD cards are relatively cheap especially when considering the old days of shooting film.

A funny story on that though.  My mom switched to digital a few years back.  Just point and shoot for fun.  I found out that she had over 20 2GB SD cards and asked why she had so many.  Her response.... because they kept filling up!  LOVE IT!!! (Still cheaper then film....  )

[Marsu42]

If you hate the "HDR look" effect, then I recommend Enfuse as a lightroon addon. 

Or use the commercial photomatrix, which now includes exposure fusion as well and is better at assembling hand-held images plus has a wysiwyg interface.

For tripod shots and when you want to specify the parameters in numbers, use a) the lr/enfuse lightroom plugin or b) shoot bracketing with magic lantern that puts an assembly & enfuse script next to the shots.

[DavidFlores]

I appreciate your points, but I personally edit my digital image processing in MATLAB IDE . It gives high flexibility to have desired look effects and can be implemented in various color spaces as RGB,HSV also NTSC.
Montana real estate

[Cgdillan]

I definitely recommend enfuse and lightroom. It's by far been the quickest way to do RE for me and I the way I end up with the best image quality. It is also easy to get everything balanced properly with out looking overly HDR.

[castillophotodesign]

here is a real estate shot i took with my 5D III & the 24L f1.4


Remodeled APT by CastilloPhotoDesign, on Flickr

[Cgdillan]

here is a real estate shot i took with my 5D III & the 24L f1.4


Remodeled APT by CastilloPhotoDesign, on Flickr

That looks really nice. A good lens/body combo although I prefer wider shots myself. good work =-)

[castillophotodesign]

here is a real estate shot i took with my 5D III & the 24L f1.4


Remodeled APT by CastilloPhotoDesign, on Flickr

That looks really nice. A good lens/body combo although I prefer wider shots myself. good work =-)

I agree, I wider shot would have been nice. but there is so much distortion with the 16-35 that i prefer using the 24L when i can. I use the 16-35 only when the 24 is not enough! This is a test shot, I'm shooting the final version tomorrow. I'll make sure to post it when is done. If you guys have any feedback to improve the shot let me know, ill definitely keep them in mind for my final image

[canon816]

The colorful lighting really makes for an interesting and appealing scene however the color casts that it leaves on the white chairs and walls is really unappealing.  I recommend that you try to clean this up in post for your final draft.  Also pushing the corner to the left a little and showing more of the room that leads into this living space might help.  (A wider lens would allow this).  I'm not sure about the TV screen either.  All in all a great start... since you were looking for a critique... this is what I think.

[Cgdillan]

here is a real estate shot i took with my 5D III & the 24L f1.4


Remodeled APT by CastilloPhotoDesign, on Flickr

That looks really nice. A good lens/body combo although I prefer wider shots myself. good work =-)

I agree, I wider shot would have been nice. but there is so much distortion with the 16-35 that i prefer using the 24L when i can. I use the 16-35 only when the 24 is not enough! This is a test shot, I'm shooting the final version tomorrow. I'll make sure to post it when is done. If you guys have any feedback to improve the shot let me know, ill definitely keep them in mind for my final image

Look forward to seeing them! The 16-35 distortion could definitely be helped lightroom or camera raw so i think i'd recommend that. Just my opinion. I shoot with 5d mmiii and 14mm bower.

http://www.stockhammedia.com/2012/07/29/real-estate-photography-luneta-drive/

[TexPhoto]

When I do HDR, I also do the image without it from the normal exposure.  Then I layer the finished HDR on top of the normal, and begin making it transparent, choosing something between the HDR and the normal exposure.