Use These Three Smartphone Camera Settings When Shooting Your Own Real Estate Images

If you've decided that you wish to shoot your own photos to pair with the online listing for your house that is about to go on the market, you may be able to do so with your smartphone. If your smartphone is relatively new, you've likely marveled at its top-notch camera that can allow you to capture stunning images as though you're using a high-end camera and lens. It's a good idea to take a number of landscape and portrait images as you move throughout your home, as your agent can then include these in your home listing to show your home from several perspectives. You should also use these specific smartphone camera settings to further capture unique views inside and outside the home.

Panorama

Panoramic images have a place in real estate listings because they can provide prospective buyers with an interesting view of your home. View your panoramas as complementary; for example, take a standard photo of your home from the curb, but also switch to the panorama setting to capture the scene. When this image is uploaded to your sale listing, prospective buyers will get a clear idea of how the home and yard look from a wider perspective. Panoramic images can also be handy in large or long rooms, such as a basement rec room.

Square

Many smartphones' cameras offer you the ability to take a photo as a square, rather than a rectangle. While rectangular images can be cropped into squares, it's handy to start with the right shape for some usages. For example, if your real estate agent uploads listing images to a social media site that uses square images such as Instagram, your square shots will already be perfectly suited. Sometimes, cropping a rectangular image will cut out part of the detail, which may be detrimental to the image being used as a marketing tool.

HDR

You may see a camera setting labeled "HDR" and not be sure about what it does, but this setting can also be valuable in providing high-quality images for your real estate listing HDR stands for "high dynamic range," which essentially means that the colors in the image will be greater than in a standard shot. If you take a standard image of your home with the generic camera setting and then take a similar shot with the HDR setting, you may notice that the second image appears more vibrant. Including some of these shots in your listing can jump out at prospective buyers.