Digital camera advice

[911pcars]

Except for perhaps the Panasonic LX-1 w/the 28mm lens, most P&S cameras will fall short in the field of vision category. I'd say 24mm max. for home interiors, and the wider the better unless you have a lot of shooting space. Stitching a panorama from 2+ exposures is a good idea, but the exposures should end up with balanced lighting and color. You don't need high res for internet pics.

The camera you use should also operate in an aperture-preferred mode and on a tripod. Maximum depth of field will render more foreground and background objects in focus. Supplemental lighting might be necessary to reduce the luminance range in a room (continuous or flash). Don't expect any camera to record details in deep shadow along with bright highlights. Even film is hard pressed to do that.

It also depends on your market. Customers looking at high end homes (what isn't these days?) want to see well lit, in-focus pictures, especially inside views. Views with parallel lines (vertical walls) result in less picture distortion and provide a truer rendition of a room or house shape. A plus would be to balance the interior light levels with the outside lighting and making the lighting appear natural. Offering homes via the internet places an emphasis on photos to sell the property.

Another option would be to hire a pro to photograph the house. With the cost of homes nowadays, this is a small investment to ensure the product looks as good as possible to potential buyers.

Fly me to MA and I'll shoot it for you. :-)

Sherwood

[nostatic]

I have a Nikon D70 with Tokina 12-24 WA zoom. Excellent for interiors, but I don't use a flash, prefering instead available light (need a tripod much of the time). The Panasonic/Leicas have their advantages (I love 16:9 native), but the current chip is pretty noisy. If you have to shoot low light and the ISO bumps up, they look like crap. Worse than most other chips/brands. My FZ20 suffers from that...I only like that camera for shooting telephoto outdoors.

Once they get a quiet 16:9 chip I'll be all over it. Until then I stick with Canon for point and shoot and the Nikon dSLR for "bigger" stuff.