Useful Smartphone Features for Taking Outstanding Photos of Homes

By Sabrina Biehl Published Mar 14, 2017 12:38 pm

As a REALTOR®, you know the value of great-looking listings filled with plenty of gorgeous interior and exterior photos of homes. While this may have called for hiring a professional photographer and/or lugging along a large camera and plenty of equipment to the property, it is now quite possible to take amazing looking photos and videos with your smartphone.

Of course, in order to create eye-catching listings that will increase sales and help sell your clients’ homes for top dollar, it is important that you use your smartphone’s camera to the best of its ability. With that in mind, let’s look at two state-of-the-art smartphones and their impressive array of camera features:

iPhone 7

The Apple iPhone 7 comes equipped with a large number of features that you can use to take stellar photos and videos. The phone features a 12MP wide-angle camera with optical image stabilization that can take regular still photos as well as 4K video recordings. More specifically, the iPhone 7 comes with a built-in telephoto lens that will allow you to get up-close-and-personal shots of a home’s interior and exterior. If you put the phone’s camera into Portrait mode, you can control the depth of the photo’s field, much like you would with a DSLR camera.

The iPhone 7 Plus has a standard wide-angle lens, along with a 2x telephoto lens that you can use to zoom in on the gorgeous marble countertops or travertine tile.

The Portrait mode feature on the iPhone 7 is great when you want to get a super clear photo of your subject with a more blurred background. While this feature is especially useful when photographing people, you can also use it in a few of your real estate photos for visual impact — for example, a picture of a fountain in the backyard or a close up of some of the hardscaping in the front yard. As a bonus, your iPhone 7 will give you prompts to be sure you are using the Portrait mode correctly — for example, you might see the message “more light required.”

When it’s time to take video recordings of a home, the iPhone 7 makes it easy to do so; the 4K recordings are crystal clear and will highlight the wonderful features of the home’s interior and exterior. Once the photos and videos have been taken, it is also extremely easy to export them to either your real estate website or blog or social media pages.

Samsung Galaxy S7

If you own a Samsung Galaxy S7, you can also take phenomenal photos of houses for your property listings. When the camera is in Auto mode, you can tap on whatever type of photo you want — this includes panorama, which is great for wide shots of an expansive front yard or a huge great room, selective focus and more. Tapping on the slider button will allow you to adjust the brightness of the photo.

The S7’s camera also includes a number of built-in settings that can help the photos look as professional as possible. For example, the Filter Effect allows you to select what filter you want for the photo and if you select the HDR feature it will make the photos appear more defined with more vibrant colors.

Recording a video with the Samsung Galaxy S7 is also a breeze, and it also offers the ability to take a still photo while shooting the video. Like the iPhone 7, it is easy and intuitive to share your photos and videos from the phone to your listings, Facebook page or in an email to the client.