7 tips on How to take good Interior Photos with a Smartphone
Smartphones camera's keep getting better and better. From raw images, panoramos and bokeh there is a lot you can do with your smartphone camera. And really for a home improvement businesses a smartphone is all you need. In the following I give you some tips.
1) Remove the Clutter. Focus on composition
Nothing is like an eyesore as far as clutter. The more clutter the more the viewer get distracted. Give them some thought about composition before you start shooting and if see clutter remove it.
2) Hold the Smartphone Vertical (straight up and down) -
It is a good idea to get in the habit of holding your phone completely vertical. If we shoot video with an angle, for one it won't look good and two distortion could occur. Distortion is when windows and doors look curved and disproportionate to how they would look in real life.
It is true you could correct distortion in photo editing programs like Photoshop. But in doing so images often get cropped, and besides there is no guarantee you can correct distortion in every single image. Best to make sure our smartphone is level from the onset.
To ensure our smartphone is vertical while shooting we can use a tripod with a bubble, this will indicate if the camera is vertical or not. Or secondly, we could use a smartphone app to indicate whether our smartphone is level or not.
3) Use raw images
Many smartphones allow you to take raw images. A raw image is an uncompressed file that has all the photo's information available for us to manipulate in post processing. By shooting in raw we can change exposure, white balance, and colours in editing. With that being said, we can edit jpegs in post processing but often it will have a less desirable result than a raw image. Reason being jpegs are a compressed file and don't possess all the photos information.
In real estate photography we shoot in raw as as much possible because often we find the need to brighten up shadows in room corners, or darkening highlights in windows. However, how great shooting in raw is there might be times when we can't get the windows as clear as we would like. This is when photo bracketing should be considered.
4) Bracketing your photos
To get those crystal clear windows we see in real estate photos we need to take different photos at different exposures. We call this photo bracketing. Often what this entails is that we take 3 or more photos, one photo that is underexposed, one that is overexposed, and one that is correctly exposed. To ensure our images blend together correctly, they need to be perfectly aligned, and consequently, a tripod should be used.
Why Do we Bracket Photos
- To create HDR photos- our smartphones will usually have an HDR setting that we can turn on but often it is not enough to create a high dynamic range photo. Instead we use a program like a LightRoom and merge the raw photos, This will create one high dynamic range photo where we can see the details in the highlights and shadows.
- Use photos as layers - In Photoshop we can use HDR but we can also blend photos together manually using layers. Basically using layers is the equivalent of placing photos one on top of each other. As a result we can either cut a section of the photo out so that we see the next photo in the layer sequence or we can change opacity allowing us to blend these layers together. Changing layer opacity allows us to control how much of each photo we want to see, allowing us to change control exposure and colours.
Using layers is particular useful when an HDR photo just does not create enough dynamic range. Often the the real estate images you see with the clear not blown out windows and the perfectly exposed room are done using Photoshop and layers.
5) Learn How to create Bokeh
As a real estate professional you might want to take details photos such as pictures of fixtures, tables and cabinets but you don't want everything in focus. This is when you use bokeh.
What is Bokeh
Bokeh is when your subject is in focus while the background is blurry. Lucky for smartphones have been quite adapt at achieving bokeh. Even newer smartphones allow us to create bokeh by changing aperture, of which allows to change the degrees of blurriness.
6) Use Natural Light
Smartphones have small sensors, there just not going to be as good in low light situations as a DSLR. Consequently, you need to really focus on getting the best possible natural light. And the best time of the day to do so is called the golden hour. The golden hour is the period of time just after sunrise and just before sunset. This is when the inside exposure, matches the outside exposure giving a photo with high dynamic range.
7) Use Pano Function
Our smartphones take pretty good panoramos. A panoramo being a 360 photo that shows the whole room and not just a scene. But you don't need to necessarily do a whole 360 photo. You have a tight bathroom where one photos is just getting a small section of the bathroom. You could use your pano option and get the whole bathroom, as you move the camera images will be merged automatically.