June 2nd, 2009
Last month Pentax announced the K7. The K7 is the first camera that has honest to goodness tone mapping built-in to it’s microcode. When you put it in HDR mode and click the shutter it shoots 3 to 5 exposures +/-2EV and then after about 10 seconds out pops a JPG that’s been tone mapped. [...]
May 31st, 2009
As many of you know I’m a big fan of Brett Clements’ work (see his profile on mediaman.com.au). I did a post on Brett’s work last Sept. Brett’s company is Propvid.tv but the HD videos don’t seem to run off his site as well as the ones he has on Vimeo.com.
I was talking to Allan [...]
May 27th, 2009
According to Dpreview.com, “Canon has announced a firmware update for its EOS 5D Mark II digital SLR enabling manual exposure when shooting videos. With the updated version, users will be able to manually adjust the shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings in the video mode. The new firmware will be available for download on 2 [...]
April 14th, 2009
Today Nikon announced the new AF-S DX NIKKOR 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED lens with built-in Silent Wave Motor (SWM) for Nikon DX-format digital SLR cameras. Compact and lightweight, this ultra wide-angle 2.4x zoom DX NIKKOR features a focal length range of 10 to 24mm, whose picture angle of 109°-61° is equivalent to a focal length of [...]
April 13th, 2009
While I don’t think compact cameras are ideal for shooting real estate I know there are Realtors out there trying to shoot acceptable photos with the absolute minimum cost so I won’t be an equipment snob. Fact is, I used a Nikon CoolPix-995 with a wide-angle converter for several years and thought it was the [...]
March 17th, 2009
The Sigma 10-20mm has been long been a popular lens for real estate photographers. I just noticed that Tamron announced the Tamron SP AF 10-24mm F3.5-4.5 Di II LD Aspherical last year at Photokina 2008. This announcement slipped right by me at the time.
The price/quality point of the Sigma 10-20 and Tamron 10-24 is the [...]
February 26th, 2009
There’s a post on gizmodo.com today that is a pretty good argument on why you want to pay the most attention to your lens than any other part of your equipment. In the article they link to a youtube video that is a great description on how lenses are manufactured.
This is why I think real [...]
February 24th, 2009
Dan Achatz’s recent discussion thread in the PFRE discussion group was very insightful for me. Dan sounds like he is struggling to keep the sensor of his new Canon 5D Mk II free of dust. I feel his pain. I’ve fought the “dust on the sensor” battle since 2003 when I got my 1Ds. For [...]
February 23rd, 2009
Last week Canon announced two new magnificent looking tilt and shift lenses. The the TS-E 24mm f/3.5L II and the TS-E 17mm f/4L. Nikon calls these kind of lenses “perspective correction” lenses. What ever you call them, these lenses are designed for architectural photography because they do two things that architectural photographers want to do:
Keep [...]
January 26th, 2009
I’m in love with my Canon G9. In many ways the Canon G10 is even better but until today I’ve not been able to find any way to put a wide-angle converter on the G10. I just don’t consider the 28mm lens on the G10 wide enough for real estate photography.
Since www.lensmateonline.com has add-on products [...]
December 12th, 2008
My friend Sabrina Huang who is a Realtor in the San Jose, CA area and teaches real estate photography classes to Realtors convinced me last summer that I needed to maintain a list of compact, point-and-shoot cameras that are suitable for real estate photography. Sabrina’s prodding led me to do this post last July on [...]
November 24th, 2008
When new real estate photographer ask me for DSLR recommendations I always recommend Nikon or Canon. I notice that the same thing usually goes on, in the PFRE flickr discusion group. The usual reason is that with Nikon and Canon you have more choices of lenses.
Now days there is another reason to stick with the [...]
November 7th, 2008
Michael Riechmann has some very in depth reviews of the Canon G10, Nikon P6000 and Panasonic Lumix DCS LX-3. I think Michael does a great job of sorting out and reviewing equipment. These three pocket cameras are probably the top contenders for light weight PAP cameras or if you are on a minimal budget a [...]
September 21st, 2008
I’ve added a camera page similar to the lenses page. It shows as “cameras” in the links along the top of the header image.
The lenses page has been hugely popular. Only the real estate directory page gets more traffic. The purpose of this page is to summarize all the current DSLR camera bodies. I use [...]
September 16th, 2008
Canon just released the specs on the new 5D Mk II. Dpreview.com also has a more in depth look up on their site. I haven’t had time to study this but it appears that for $2700 USD you get more than what you had to shell out $7900 USD for, yesterday at this time.
This reinforces [...]
