Smartphone Photography Gets an Upgrade

Guest contributor Melissa Dittmann Tracey of REALTOR®Mag says:

Many real estate professionals like the convenience of snapping photos of homes from their smartphones, but sometimes the quality of the photographs can suffer. At the International Consumer Electronics Show last month in Las Vegas, several manufacturers introduced ways to upgrade your mobile photographs with attachable lenses, cameras with more megapixels, and portable printers.

Some companies are looking at transforming your smartphone into a higher quality camera by adding the ability to just clip on a lens. For example, Sony's QX10 is the first-ever lens-only camera that can clip onto your smartphone to take photos. You can also take photos from it when it's detached and later upload it to your smartphone for sharing and editing. The camera boasts a 10x optical zoom. The lens-only camera is compatible with iOS and Android smartphones and retails for $250, and a QX100 version is also available with greater zoom capability.

The Olloclip is another snap-on lens product, made for the iPhone. You can snap one of four lenses onto your smartphone, allowing you to be able to capture wide-angle and fish-eye photos of spaces in a home too.

Smartphone cameras have been getting continuous upgrades in recent years with higher megapixel cameras that rival many point-and-shoots. Sony debuted its Xperia Z1s smartphone at CES, which was touted for being waterproof and able to be submerged in nearly five feet of water, but the smartphone also boasts a 20.7-megapixel camera.

Several manufacturers are also debuting portable printers to instantly print your smartphone photos from anywhere you are. For example, Fujifilm Instax SHARE Smartphone Printer is a wireless, portable printer that can instantly print pocket-sized photos from your smartphone. An app on your smartphone can be used to edit the photos, such as resizing, cropping, or applying filters. LG also debuted its Pocket Photo 2.0 that can turn your smartphone photos into 2-by-3-inch prints – a perfect way to help clients document the listings they've viewed.

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