Get Back to Basics With Real Estate Photography Using Your DSLR Camera

Get Back to Basics With Real Estate Photography Using Your DSLR Camera

Use a full-frame (full sensor) DSLR and take maximum advantage of your expensive lenses.

Shoot and save RAW files (On my Canon 5D Mark II, these are 21MB images).  Raw + JPEG is okay, as it gives you both.  Back-up every image you shoot and archive them on an external desktop hard drive.

Use a tripod.

Turn off the flash on your camera.  Learn to shoot with ambient light (daylight supplemented by indoor lighting).

Picture Style should be set to "Natural".

Shoot in Manual Mode - Shooting in Auto mode is a bit like kissing your cousin.

Shooting at f/22 is ideal.

ISO 100 should be your preferred speed.

Set your camera's White Balance before you begin taking pictures (but don't stress out if you forget, as you can easily correct your mistakes with a wide variety of photo editing software choices).  

Use Auto-Focus.

Skip Image Stabilization when using a tripod.  It's not necessary.

Get yourself the most recent version of Adobe Photoshop Essentials software.  Lightroom is another must-have.  I'm a fan of DxO software myself and use it mostly for its batch processing capabilities.  Learn to use photo editing software, but don't overdo it.