CalevPhoto

Playing with some new toys

Although we do not celebrate Christmas, that doesn’t mean I did not get any toys… With my birthday earlier in the month and with some spare photography money I received a few things this season and yesterday I finally had the chance to get out and play with them – well sort of.  I had two real estate shoots to take care of and one of them was at a property with quite a bit of land and a horse barn.

The image above is a seven image exposure blend using my TS-E 24 II and my new Singh-Ray Color Combo.  I really like how the Color Combo brought out the blue in the sky.  As those of you who live here know, blue skies are quite rare here.  Had I not used the filter the sky would have been whitish and I would have had to do some post processing to get the sky bluer – though it would not have looked as natural as it does here.

Above is another image with the Color Combo.  While the previous image was not shifted very much, this one had a bit more shift.  As you can see the vignetting with the TS-E 24 II is minimal.  I generally use the TS-E 24 II for exterior shots and the TS-E 17 for interiors.

The above image used by TS-E 17.  The TS-E 17 does not accept filters  – though a polarizer would have had a negative effect indoors anyways.  In this shot I replaced the windows in Photoshop.  I did it rather quickly and am not crazy about the result but these images will be viewed small.  I also used one of my new toys – Viveza by Nik Software.

This weekend I purchased the Complete Collection by Nik Software using a discount on Ron’s blog.  I have been having fun playing with all of the tools in the package (except for SilverEfex – right now I do not do too much in black and white), but for real estate so far Viveza is the only one I need.  I found that by adding a bit of warmth to the shot and removing some of the green the shot looks a lot better.

The above is another similar shot in these conditions.  In this case the window removal came out a bit better.  I honestly just used the quick select tool in Photoshop.  In some cases it works well while in the previous shot I should have been a bit more careful.

Next week I have my final toy coming – well sort of.  We ordered a G11 for an upcoming vacation where I will not be able to take my 5D2.  Of course, it is probably foolish to think that I will have a chance to use it, as Eitan has been wanting that camera and will quickly take it from me.

My first stolen photos

Well, it was bound to happen at some point or another.  Someone has stolen several of my photos.  In this case they were real estate photos and ironically are not some of my better photos.

Some time ago my wife, who is a real estate agent, had a listing that I took photos of.  The shoot was quite difficult and I wound up having to reshoot the property.  In retrospect, it was an important property for me because it was what eventually prompted me to move from pure HDR to exposure blending.

The shot above was one of the photos stolen and certainly has its flaws – the worst of which are probably the incorrect verticals.

Unfortunately, after quite a bit of work by both myself and my wife, my wife realized that this wasn’t going to work out so she cancelled the listing.  The seller then relisted the property several months later with a different agent.

Of course, the new agent helped herself to my photos, and I have of course insisted that these photos be removed.  If they are not removed soon, I intend to send her the bill for my services and pursue this in court if they are not removed.

What bothers me even more though was the response from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service (NWMLS).  When I contacted them asking what I needed to do to get the photos removed, a rude woman responded that they will not take any requests from photographers.  The listing agent must submit a complaint.  Luckily the previous listing agent in this case was my wife so she filed the formal complaint using the form she mentioned.

So far NWMLS has not bothered to reply to the complaint, which has me even more angered.  I am half tempted to file a lawsuit against them for copyright infringement.  This is simply not correct.  If a photographer sends them a certified letter demanding his images be removed from their site, they must do this.  NWMLS must understand that real estate agents do not own the copyright for these photographs – the photographers do.

New lessons in real estate

While I haven’t discussed real estate photography here much during the last several weeks, I have been extremely busy photographing houses.  The market has definitely picked up and I now photograph at least one or two houses a week – even though I currently only work with two agents!

While I am happy that I made the switch to HDR, I have still been working on getting the colors right and improving my photos.  In this post, I will discuss some things I have learned during the last few weeks.

Lesson 1 Windows do not always need to be the correct temperature

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Continuing the HDR process

As many of you know, I have switched my real estate photography to HDR.  It has taken me a bit of time getting used to it but I do like it much better.  In particular, I am able to shoot houses quicker – which makes a difference now that Nelya is getting a lot of listings!

Recently she got another listing and I went out to photograph it.  There were two main goals I hoped to fix.

• Fix the reflections on the floor from the windows.
• Improve the view from the windows.

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My next attempt with HDR in real estate

One nice offshoot of my first take with HDR is that another agent asked me to shoot one of his listings.  Of course I obliged and was determined to fix some of the things I didn’t like with my earlier shoot.  In general, I am pleased with the results.

One thing that I am pleased with in these shots is that I did not blow out the windows as I did before.  In my first attempt I was a bit lazy and just set the camera to bracket the exposures.  This time, I metered the windows and then metered the darkest part of the room, then took a shot each stop in between.  I like the results of this much better.

Of course, there are some things I would like to improve.

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Switching to HDR in real estate

After a number of disagreements with my wife on how to light real estate photos, naturally my wife won.  Therefore, we came to an agreement that she gets me a copy of Photomatix and I start taking pictures in HDR.

Being not familiar very much with HDR, I used one of her listings that is coming up to try it out.  The listing is a foreclosed property and has promise but needs a lot of work on the inside.

I must say that I am quite impressed with the new version of Photomatix.  It is easier now to create images that aren’t as fake as they used to be.  I also like the RAW file support and the ability to create an HDR shot from a single RAW file, which is fun to play with.  They even added support for the 5D Mark II, so they are definitely on top of things. Continue Reading…

Congrats to Canon on the TS-E 17!

Recently it has been a bit of a bummer being a Canon user.  Granted, the 5D Mark II is a great camera and competes very well with the D700, but every other camera in their SLR line seems to take a back seat these days.

Therefore it was nice to see Canon still has a bit of ingenuity up their sleaves in the TS-E 17 F4 lens.  One area where Canon still has an advantage over Nikon is in their lenses.  Canon simply has far more lenses and far more good primes specifically.  Nikon has a few lenses Canon doesn’t – such as the 14-24 and the 200-400, but the Canon lenses I use most often – the 70-200/4 IS and the MP-E 65 – have no equivalents in Nikon.

Still, Canon has the tendency lately to sit back on their laurels and let Nikon catch up.  That is what happened with high ISO capabilities and I expected the same to occur for lenses – where Canon’s strategy lately has been to upgrade existing lenses.

This is not the case with the TS-E 17 – which is the ultimate interior photography lens.  Already I am salivating at the thought of taking real estate pictures with this lens – though I’m having more than a little trouble convincing my wife that it is worth it!

I had planned to buy the TS-E 24 at some time, but I wasn’t crazy about it.  I had heard that the lens was not great optically and 24mm is a great distance from my 16-35 that I normally use.  I did use a friend’s TS-E 24 briefly in a house I photographed, but I put the lens away because I needed something much wider.  The TS-E 17 fits the bill exactly.

I hope that this is a sign for the future – that Canon will keep innovating.  They now have another lens with no equivalent in other systems and I suspect a good number of interior photographers will buy a Canon camera if they are not using one just to be able to use this lens.

Now if I can just figure out where to get $2500.

Playing with some different lenses for real estate

At the same time I had the opportunity to try out an Alienbees light for real estate, I also had the opportunity to try out two lenses I have been thinking of.

• Canon 14mm 2.8L
• Canon TS-E 24

I currently use the 16-35mm 2.8 II for all of my real estate photography, mounted on a full frame sensor.  Therefore I was very curious to see what the 14mm can do as well as the tilt effect of the TS-E 24.  The following shot used the 16-35.

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Playing with Alienbees lights in real estate

To be honest, I was a bit upset at my last real estate shoot.  I didn’t think the pictures came out very well and a number of my coworkers agreed.  There were numerous problems with them such as

• Not correcting for verticals
• Blown out areas from the flash
• Shadows
• Some parts of the photos were too dark

I had a number of theories on how to fix these issues, but for the lighting my idea was to purchase an Alienbees light and an extra Pocketwizard MultiMAX and use it as a third light.  One of my coworkers offered to stop by the house with a lot of the equipment that I am looking to buy someday so I was able to get a good look at what it can accomplish and whether it will solve some of my problems.

One note before I show these shots.  When we took these photos, we were mainly trying to see what the lights and lenses were capable of and what issues we may have.  We did not correct for verticals and I did not Photoshop any of these pictures.  In this way you can get a good idea what the equipment did without seeing what it looks like after Photoshop.

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My first million dollar shoot

This weekend, I had the opportunity to shoot my first property over one million dollars (1.243 million to be exact).  The property is in a hot neighborhood and is priced hundreds of thousands below its competition, so I was excited to finally shoot a house like this.  The house was also the largest I have shot to date.

Of course, I actually had the ‘opportunity’ to shoot this house twice, as my original pictures taken at night turned out so bad that I needed to reshoot.  The following is what I learned from this shoot. Continue Reading…