Samsung Galaxy S7 - Camera Phone HDR Real Estate Photos
Real estate photography is an art. It is often over-looked by real estate agents looking to save some money on their listing, but in the end, they often just take bad pictures and thus deny the listing sufficient traffic to drive up the price. Thus, by "saving" $200 - $400 per photo shoot, they cost their client thousands of dollars.
Even when a real estate agent invests in a camera, often times the camera angles are bad, the lighting is not well thought out, and on and on. This is a big pet peeve of mine as it is my humble opinion that the photography is one of the most important aspects of a quality listing.
A couple of weeks ago, I upgraded my phone to a Samsung Galaxy S7 as my Samsung Galaxy S5 took pretty horrible, mostly out of focus pictures, especially of my kids or dogs and/or in lower light situations such as real estate photography. Even with the HDR turned on, the S5 just did not deliver.
Curious to see how the Samsung Galaxy S7 compared to the S5, I quickly popped a picture of a beautiful interior I was touring on Sunday. This $400,000 townhouse in Littleton presented nicely and the window to the court yard was not overly bright as it was in the shade, so I knew I wasn't really giving the Galaxy S7 the ultimate test, but it was a good start.
I was very surprised with the result.
In our real estate photography phone camera comparison post, I share the professional listing photo from the listing agent at Coldwell Banker Residential 24 MLS 8335918. The photo is a strong, professional photo, properly rectilinear, nicely color balanced and well composed. I then share the photo from the Samsung Galaxy S7. Wait until you see the difference!
In this professional photo, the photographer does a nice job of capturing the brightest brights - out the window, the lamp shade and the recessed lighting. The recessed lighting retains pretty tight edges around the circles. The window trim is not super dark from overly-heavy HDR editing. The light reflecting off the coffee table has been dampened down a bit to retain the wood grain. The vertical lines are all plumb and parallel to the edges of the picture. The shadows are not too dark, the brights are not "blown out" into the white spectrum but retain detail. Most importantly, the HDR processing did not getting heavy-handed and stray into making the colors super-saturated or cartoon-like. The colors and textures resemble what they are in real life. Detail and focus is good throughout (note this is not uploading well to ActiveRain, so visit our web site to see this...). The composition shares the L-shaped lay out well, and makes sure to include the refrigerator location for the chef browsing photos online. It's about as good an all-in-one look at a first floor as one can do. It's a solid 9.5 out of 10.
On our web site, you will see a quick photo I took with the Samsung Galaxy S7 as I was walking out the door. The camera was in HDR mode, and I did not pay sufficient attention to include the fridge. However, note that the angle was sufficiently wide to capture almost the same view as the professional's lens. (The similarity of camera angles was a complete coincidence, but I share a professional photographer's eye, so was not surprising to me.) The colors in the phone picture are more saturated, the shadows are darker (possibly heavier on "black"). The white balance is a little different as you can see more of the tungsten lighting coloring on the white door on the right. However, overall, I was very impressed! Note that the phone camera retained good detail out the window in the brighter exterior. The edges of the recessed lighting are a little fuzzy, but not horrendous. Thus, the contrast is higher, but this might be able to be altered in the camera settings, but I also like the look as it adds some depth to the image. Overall, the optional grid lines (can be turned off and on) allowed for me to easily line up the verticals without a tripod or editing in "post". The Galaxy S7 picked up on the lights and the darks and did not lose too much of the detail in either. The colors are realistic and the white of the ceiling is pleasing to the eye.
Conclusion: Your real estate agent should always hire a professional photographer. End of story. No question. If he or she does not, ask why. If you insist on working with someone who does not understand the fundamentals of real estate marketing, then you hire one and provide the photos to your agent.
However, that being said, if you are looking to buy an entry level camera for real estate photography as a real estate agent because there are no professional photographers in your market (smaller town perhaps, like Green Lake, WI where I noticed very few good real estate pictures in real estate listings), and you want your photos to stand out from the crowd, consider buying the Samsung Galaxy S7 as you will always have your camera with you.
Rick Janson is the employing broker at Denver Lifestyle® Real Estate online at www.DenverLifestyle.com. Through the extensive study of photography and after taking and editing over 10,000 images, Rick is now a paid professional photographer as well.
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