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Perhaps you mean higher ISO settings? Low ISO needs a faster shutter and/or wider aperture.
OK, here come some basic photography tips from an Airbnb photographer…
For most interior shots, you will need a wide angle lens - commonly around 16mm on a full-frame camera, 12mm on a crop-sensor - and a small aperture, perhaps f/16, to get everything from front to back of the picture in focus. This usually means you need a shutter speed far lower than can be hand-held. Trying to shoot hand-held below about 1/30th of a second will probably result is a photo that is blurred from camera shake. I often use an exposure of over 1 second when doing Airbnb shoots.
Best solution is a tripod, but you can improvise with a high stool, or even a stool perched on a chair. The camera height to aim for is around half the ceiling height. This minimises distortion. Shoot either into a corner, or with the camera parallel to a wall. This again minimises distortion.
Use the shutter delay on your camera. This is a setting that sets a gap of a few seconds between pressing the shutter button and the shutter actually tripping, which means the camera isn’t moving from the pressure of your finger on the shutter when the shot is actually taken.
The Airbnb website is configured for landscape images in a 1:1.5 ratio of height vs width. Many cameras allow this to be set.
A bit of editing can make a massive difference to the final result; a programme such as Photoshop or Lightroom, or one of the free programmes such as FastStone is worth learning to use.
We had great photos we took ourselves (almost pro level if I say so myself, just not as wide-angle as the usual Air photos) but recently ordered the official photography at one of our listings, in the hopes that it would help our poor ranking in the local market. It cost 10000 yen for our large studio apartment.
Unexpectedly, the ranking and views per day still suck, BUT we’ve had a conversion bump. More people seem to be booking.
Just wondered what was your experience.
I had a look and your images are great! Blown highlights in windows but that’s ok, only us picky professional photographers see those things. Nicely done and I agree that real estate photographers do use too wide angle views (the real estate market demands it, looking unnatural is ok to them).
Is there a website or service where you can find photographers? I don’t want to use the Airbnb service as I’d like to use the photographs on other listing services as well.
this is the tricky part! you can of course google yourlocalarea+photographer. or try instagram.
As a photographer it’s also quite hard to be listed or found in any one area, many of the sites that get you to join don’t vett people, and then want to charge for the listing, so you pay to be buried under a sea of others.
