My friend Sabrina Huang who is a Realtor in the San Jose, CA area and teaches real estate photography classes to Realtors convinced me last summer that I needed to maintain a list of compact, point-and-shoot cameras that are suitable for real estate photography. Sabrina’s prodding led me to do this post last July on compact cameras and adding a list of compact cameras to my camera list.
There have been several developments on the compact camera front recently that I want to pass on to those thinking about a compact camera for real estate shooting:
* The Canon G10 was announced: Despite generally positive reviews of the G10 and the fact that it’s lens is significantly wider than the G9, it’s 28mm lens is not wide enough for real estate work. Further, it is not clear whether or not there is or will be a quality wide-angle adapter for the G10 that will get it to 24mm or wider. If anyone has hands on experience with a good quality wide-angle converter for the G10 please let me know. The big downside of using any kind of wide-angle converter is it degrades the image and adds more to the cost.
* Reviews of the Panasonic LX3 are extremely positive: This appears to be a pretty amazing little camera with a f2.0, 24mm Leica lens! Michael Reichmann has an excellent review of the LX3. The only strangeness about the LX3 is that Panasonic has not yet released the RAW file specs, meaning you can’t work with Raw images in Lightroom, Aperture or Photoshop yet. You must use Panasonic’s RAW processor. Many seem optimistic that Panasonic will eventually release the RAW specs. Apparently all this has something to do with the fact that Panasonic has decided to fix barrel distortion in the camera or in the RAW processing.
* Michael (at the very bottom of the LX3 review) claims that the LX3 is in fact a Leica D-Lux 4 with Panasonic branding. You just pay another $400 if you want this same camera with Leica name. For this reason I’ve taken the D-Lux 4 out of my recommended real estate camera list.
I’ve had questions about purchasing accessories like a tripod and external flashes for use with a compact camera that can be used when you move up to a DSLR. Here are my suggestions:
* Tripods: A good tripod can easily cost as much as a compact camera. If you plan to use a tripod for a long time just get the sturdiest one you can afford. Eventually you’ll want a ball head but that’s not essential to get started.
* External flashes: Built-in flashes are not very useful for lighting interiors since they don’t have much power. However, they can be used to optically trigger other flashes. If you’ve ever been to a Scott Hargis and Thomas Grubba lighting workshop you will appreciate the simplicity of working with flashes that have a built-in optical triggers…
Larry
Source: Photography For Real Estate.net
Diciembre 22nd, 2008 a las 5:09 pm
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onUpdate On Compact Cameraâ??s For Real Estate Photography por Blog …Here’s a quick excerptMy friend Sabrina Huang who is a Realtor in the San Jose, CA area and teaches real estate photography classes to Realtors convinced me last summer that I needed to maintain a list of compact, point-and-shoot cameras that are suitable … [...]