Here is a collection of some of the more uninspiring and unbelievably poor real estate photos we have seen. Here’s a short video with music and voice narration that shows some of the worst…

Okay, basically it’s a realtors sales pitch but they have collected some absolutely great examples of what not to do in real estate photography.

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RealPIX announces the world’s first and only specialty wide angle digital camera built just for real estate photography.

Nashville, TN (PRWeb) April 6, 2007 — Today, RealPIX announces the world’s first and only specialty wide angle digital camera built just for real estate photography.

The RealPIX camera answers the requests of hundreds of thousands of working real estate sales agents who are frustrated at not being able to buy a simple point and shoot digital camera with the high quality ultra wide angle lens and powerful flash needed for taking web-ready photos of the rooms and exteriors of houses for sale. Until the RealPIX camera, the features most needed by real estate agents have been coupled to other features they do not need. This has made it very expensive for them to buy a digital camera with the professional grade wide angle lens and flash they need for this unique work.

The RealPIX includes the features real estate professionals need, and does not include the features they do not need. It is truly the world’s first point and shoot real estate photography solution. Its all-glass 22mm equivalent wide angle lens is the widest lens available in the world on any point and shoot camera, regardless of price — giving a full 90-degree field of view, and fixed focus from 4-feet to infinity. It provides a crisp rectilinear (undistorted) image, and has an f-1:2.0 aperture for terrific low-light level performance. The built-in flash is also the best point and shoot flash ever offered, at any price, providing diffuse, even illumination in completely dark rooms out to over 20-feet.

The RealPIX includes built-in memory for 400+ pictures, a built-in ultra powerful Lithium Polymer battery for years of service and over 400 full-power flash shots on a full charge. The RealPIX includes all of the accessories needed for daily use: belt case, wrist strap, USB cable, car charger, wall charger, and a user manual. RealPIX has a 30-day money back guaranty, and a no-questions 1-year replacement warranty.

The RealPIX digital camera will start shipping on July 15th, and online preorder reservations can be placed starting today on the RealPIX web site at http://www.realpixcamera.com . RealPIX is priced at $299, with free ground shipping to USA destinations.

RealPIX Real Estate Digital Camera Features:

• Fixed focus 22mm f2.0 lens
• No visible lens distortion
• Full 90-degree field of view
• 400 picture onboard memory
• Lithium Polymer battery
• High power, wide angle flash
• Battery charges via USB
• 640×480 pixel resolution
• Pics saved as web JPEGs
• Rugged durability. High quality.
• Belt case, wrist strap, AC/Car/USB travel chargers, USB cable, user manual included

Ken Rockwell shows us how to achieve the perfect real estate interior pictures. As Ken notes, interiors are difficult because most of the time lighting is less than perfect. To get the right look you need to balance the light coming from windows with interior lighting which means you’re going to need to fiddle with your camera’s settings. Most digital cameras are fooled by the lighting on interior real estate photos so here are some steps to take too make sure that does not happen.

Here is an article directed at real estate agents who want to improve the quality of their digital real estate photos. The author asks, “Would you like to take better images of your real estate listing?”

The value of great looking images as a marketing tool should not be underestimated. Whether it’s a low end ‘fixer’ or a multi-million dollar luxury home, great images are important and are going to help sell your listings.

[Choosing A Digital Camera For Real Estate Photography]

[via Rain City Guide]

Digital Camera Tracker Provides Solution To Real Estate Agents #1 Photo Problem: Real estate agents across the world face the same problems when photographing the exterior of a home, clutter. Clutter comes in the form of parked cars, trees, shrubs, utility poles, signs and the list goes on. To get the full exterior view of a home real estate agents jockey around until they get the entire home minus as much of the clutter as they can.

Wide angle lenses can be used but because of the increased coverage what generally happens is more clutter is included in the photo.

There is a solution to getting the perfect exterior home photo.

Here is a classic real estate photo problem, clutter. There is simply no way to get close enough to get the entire outside of the home and yet when you move back far enough to get it all, look what you get?

The solution is use photo stitching software that combines several photos into one. That way you can walk up much closer (minus the cars, trees, lines and shrubs) to the homes exterior and take a series of photos and then combine them into one. Without using the photo stitching technique the following photograph would literally be impossible to create.

Here is another example of standing across the street and getting the entire exterior plus the tree, street and sign. No way around it.

This time I stood on the sidewalk right in front of the home and took three photos and then used stitching (free) software to combine the clutterless images.

What happens when you simply do not have enough room to move back to show everything, as in this view of the back of the home? In the following photo my back was literally against the fence and at the cameras widest angle of view this is all I could get.

Knowing that I could combine several images I walked up closer to the back of the home and took a sequence of four photos. Notice how the resulting photo shows everything.

Photo stitching gives far more flexibility and tremendous control over photos.

Make Impossible Real Estate Pictures Possible – The Secret Revealed Part 3: In most real estate pictures a single shot almost always completely fails to capture the wide field of view that the human eye sees. In this article we’ll detail how we photograph overlapping images and then use special software to combine them into one photos.

Taking The Shots

Essentially you want to capture a series of images around a single point of rotation, so a tripod is ideal. Fortunately it isn’t essential for most images so long as you keep the camera as level as possible and keep the movement as you rotate to a minimum.

You want a good area of overlap on each shot, preferably a third or more. It’s much better to take too many shots rather than too few.

Taking multiple shots also has the major advantage that it helps cut down distortion. If you think about looking at a fence, at the center of your vision the slats of the fence produce regular rectangles, but on either side perspective turns these rectangles into trapezia with each fence post progressively smaller into the distance. Trying to match these from one photograph to another would be impossible, so you want to be able to work with just the head-on central sections. If your camera doesn’t have a fixed lens it’s also better to, if necessary step back, and zoom in and take more images more flat on.

Closely spaced photographs also help cut down on the widely varying results produced by automatic exposure cameras. Auto exposure compensates for different lighting conditions by adjusting the tonal range between shadows and highlights. This produces the best results for each separate picture but means that the colors of one shot can be completely different to the next.

Software

Once you have your series of overlapping images you will transfer then to your PC and then use software that will combine (stitch) your overlapping images into one image.

Absolutely Free Stitching Software.

AutoStitch Software

Real Estate Digital Stills Converted To Video: One use of real estate stills is to convert them into video tours. Real estate agents could use this technique to create video tours of properties which could be placed on CD or on the Internet.

For a description on how we converted stills to video you can floow this link.