How to Select a Good Point and Shoot Camera

Recently, Kodak partnered with REALTOR® Magazine to present a nationwide “Listing through a Lens” webinar on taking good pictures. This webinar covered many aspects of photography and serves as an excellent reference for agents who are looking to improve the photo quality of the listings they market.

While there are many considerations for what makes a good camera, with today’s modern cameras and technology, it is possible for an agent to take a great picture using a point and shoot that has a great lens. This series of articles will provide real estate agents with valuable information on the types of equipment they need, and feature expert content to help maximize your listing photos.

In this article, we are pleased to provide some of the features you would want to look for in a “point-and-shoot” digital camera to get the most out of your listings.

This is not to say that you cannot get good results with cameras with lower specifications, but, in general, the features below are readily available in today’s cameras and will help you maximize your flexibility to get the best shots.

1. Wide-Angle Lens—Wide-angle lenses are key to real estate. The benefit of a wide-angle lens is that it allows a wider field of view so you can get more in a shot. For instance, a wide-angle lens makes small spaces look bigger, and also helps you more easily capture a larger room or front façade of a home. It is recommended that you get a camera with at least a 28-mm wide-angle lens. This will serve you in most situations. There are cameras that also go wider than that (the lower the number of millimeters, the wider the lens), but this is not necessary for most shots.

2. Lens Quality—Select a camera with an excellent lens. Examples are Schneider Kreuznach lenses (used in many Kodak cameras) or Carl Zeiss lenses. A great lens gives excellent clarity, sharpness, detail and color.

3. At least 8X Optical Zoom—Why is zoom important? It provides flexibility to get into the details of a scene without going up close to it, and also helps you zoom in on features that you otherwise might not be able to get to. Larger zooms give you this flexibility, and optical means the zoom is being done with a lens, not digitally, which gives you better picture quality.

4. High Resolution—The resolution of cameras, usually denoted by megapixels, is often marketed as “Image Quality” by many companies. This is only partially true; it also refers to the maximum image size an image can be printed in. The more megapixels, the larger an image can be printed or displayed with clarity. We recommend at least a 12-megapixel camera, partially because they are readily available, but also because this gives you flexibility to print larger (if necessary) and, more importantly, gives you the added flexibility to edit the image and maintain image quality (i.e. zoom in and crop a section of a photo without any loss of clarity).

In a nutshell, high resolution will save you from having to reshoot the photos in order to highlight unique features of the home that weren’t captured during the initial photo shoot.

This post was written by Veneeta Eason, Director, Worldwide Marketing Manager – Real Estate for Kodak.

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