Taking Real Estate Photography to the Next Level - Part 1

We take the photography of our listings REALLY seriously, and have found that producing the best photos in the area can really help sell listings and satisfy homeowners with your marketing. We have often been asked how we do what we do, and so this entry is intended to share some of our equipment secrets for the benefit of our colleagues. (Notes: If you are an agent in San Diego, we won't take your photos, but I will try to answer any questions.)

First, before I go into the equipment, I want to talk about what this is worth. I have spoken with a number of professional photographers who have their own equipment. I have shown them a few of our brochures and explain exactly what we are doing so that they can give me a realistic price quote. (The reason for asking is because sometimes during May/June, we can get pretty stressed with listings and some backup resources would be good to have.) The quotes usually come in around $2,000 to $3,000 for the photo shoot and assembly of the digital images delivered on a DVD. That's how good these photos are, and you, too, can create stunning images and can save a lot. OK, so that's the level that we're talking about.

I'll break up the equipment into components: camera back, lens, and other (tripods, flashes, etc.). For around $6,000 to $8,000, you can have a first-class equipment. Before you say, "My God, I'm not going to pay $6,000 on camera equipment," remember that the cost of the equipment is about 2 or 3 of the photo shoots that we would have to pay for if we were hiring a professional. If you absolutely will not buy the equipment, then, if you are near a good camera rental store (we have a Calumet store in our area that rents equipment), then you can probably rent all the equipment for 24 hours for around $500.

I would encourage you to buy, rather than rent, the equipment for simple strategic reasons. If you buy the equipement, you'll use it on every single property. Whether it is a condo or a rental or a $2M home, you'll take the photos with it. If you have to rent the equipment, then I can assure you that the calculus that will go on inside your head will be "This is just a rental, so I'm just going to use my point and shoot camera." This is understandable since the rental cost would gobble up a huge portion of your listing commission on a rental. BUT, if you buy the equipment, then you'll use it every time, and, hey, you can even take family photos too.

Camera backs. We use a Canon 5D camera back; cost was around $3,000. I went through the analysis of using a Canon Rebel (less than $1000) or some of their other equipment. Here's why I concluded that I had to get either a 5D or a 1D. I think (not sure) that all the digital SLRs by Canon can accept the Canon lens set. So, goes the rationale, I could buy a good lens and put it on a cheaper body and get similar results, right? The answer is no, you cannot. The cheaper bodies have smaller image sensors. The lens sends the full image to the backplane, but the image bleeds over the sensor such that the sensor only picks up around 2/3 of the image. What does that mean? It means that you don't get the full capability of that beautiful lens that you bought because the field of view has been reduced. This is IMPORTANT; you get what you pay for, and if you buy cheap, you'll pay a HUGE penalty. If you don't believe me, then visit the rental department and have the same lens put on different backs and you can see exactly what I'm talking about.

So, I had two choices at the time that I bought. The 5D was a 12 megapixel back, and the 1D was a 16 megapixel back. BOTH were full sensor images, so both caught the entire image projected by the lens. The 1D was around $8000 for just the back, and I didn't need to print photos that were 24 inches wide, so I opted for the cheaper 5D.

Before I get to the lens, I want to talk about camera tripods. If you're going to have a $5000 piece of equipment 5 feet off the ground, GET A ROCK SOLID TRIPOD. If that camera hits the ground, you'll be weeping for days. I use a Manfrotto tripod with levers on the legs, but there are many solid sets of "sticks." Get one that extends up to at LEAST 6 feet, preferably 7 or 8. There may be times that you need the height to shoot over a fence at the lovely canyon. You will discover that the sticks are only the first part, and that you'll have to buy the tripod "head" separately. You can buy either 2-axis or 3-axis camera heads. For still camera work, a 3 axis camera head is really nice because you never have to adjust the legs...just set the legs down, and the head can compensate for unevenness.

Having said that a 3-axis head is better, I use a 2-axis video head. Video heads are made differently because they have internals that allow one to gracefully pan a scene with very even movement. Since we also shoot videos of all of our listings, I HAD to have a video head for our video camera. But I didn't want to have two tripods. My video head has a quick connect/disconnect, so I bought an extra head connector to screw on to my camera. That means that I have one tripod and I can put either my Canon 5D or my video camera on the tripod within seconds. Since we are not in the photography business, that was a cheaper alternative, but I do have to make adjustments because I don't have a 3-axis head on the tripod. A good tripod/head can cost $500 if you are getting a video head; it will be cheaper if you're using a 3-axis camera head.

That's all for part one of this post. I'll post the second part later this week. If you read this and have questions, post your questions, and I'll answer them in the second part of the post.

Margaret Hokkanen, Carlsbad and Encinitas Real Estate

Review of Reverse Lookup Phone Services

I recently had my Blackberry stolen from my car. Guess what...I got it back! The fellow who had it seemed like a fairly decent chap...I don't know how to gauge these things. (Yes, he did buy my phone for a $100 from some unknown guy and he did use it for a month on my service....but he did return it instead of tossing it in a dumpster.)

In order to try to track the person down who had been using the phone, we had only ONE thing - the phone records of the phone calls that he made. So the challenge was to connect these phone numbers to people and people to addresses so that we could investigate and try to find out who had the phone.

In the process of doing this, we used several different Internet lookup services: 1) Information USA - available through the local library as one of their databases; 2) ReversePhoneLookup.com; and 3) Intelius. I thought I would share some observations about all three of these.

Information USA - This was free to us through our local library so the price was right. Basically, it has only land lines that are published in directories as far as I can determine. I was able to get a few phone numbers, but I decided to move on to for-fee resources for better performance (or so I thought).

ReversePhoneLookup.com - This cost $40 for a year's lookups. On the postive side, I would say the interface was a tad friendlier. Also, it gave the name of the local telecom provider who was handling the phone as well as the city origin of the exchange. NOTE: Now that you can transfer phone numbers across telecom providers and from landlines to mobile, I don't know if their data is accurate. (i.e., something tells me that they are probably giving the origin provider, not the current one). Anyway, I didn't care who the provider was, and I had only marginal interest in the exchange location (since a lot of these were mobile phones). AS FAR AS I COULD TELL, I could have gotten the names/addresses from InfoUSA instead of buying this service. If I knew then what I know now about what I would get, I would NOT have purchased it. Recommendation: Use the library's database; it's landline lookup is as good as this one.

Intelius - This service GURANTEES that they will get the name, and they'll charge you $14/number. In my case, they failed to deliver, so at least I didn't get charged. But here's what bugged me about how they operate....When you type in the phone number, they return a screen that says "NAME AVAILABLE" and "ADDRESS AVAILABLE" suggesting that if you buy the lookup that you'll get the name/address. Bascially, they are printing that for EVERY phone number that you key in WITHOUT REGARD to whether or not they can actually pull the name/address. I treat such marketing as a lie, and I don't like being lied to. It's bad enough that they misrepresented that they had the address, but they took 3-4 days before they told me that it was a no-charge situation. I didn't try to go elsewhere with the number because I thought they were going to produce results. Anyway, you get the point of the frustration.

Peoplefinders - This is a plug-in-the-name-and-get-the-name/number service. This allowed me to look up someone by name, and since I knew where they lived, they showed related parties. VERY INTERESTING. I didn't pay to actually pull the details, but the free teaser was pretty interesting because it gave me all the siblings names. (My thought was that if I couldn't get in contact with the guy who had the phone, then I'd contact all the siblings.)

But all's well that ends well. I hope this was of interest and value. If you have tried a service that you like, please leave a comment so that I know of other good ones for the future.

Margaret Hokkanen

Encinitas and Carlsbad Real Estate