Taking Pictures of Homes with Mobile Devices

Earlier this week I started a little experiment by taking the blog posts I write on my Twin Cities Housing Market Blog and copying them to a few websites.

The results up to this point have been interesting. I’m not sure if copying my own content to a few sites will hurt my SEO, but the interactions and visitors I’m receiving has been interesting. (I’ll write about my results of this experiment in March)

One of the posts I shared on ActiveRain has received quite a bit of attention, Don’t let your agent photograph your home with their cell phone.

I will admit picture quality in cell phones has come a long ways, even in the year since I last wrote this post things have changed quite a bit. Even ipads are capable of taking better photos, but my concern with using a mobile device over a piece of equipment that’s designed to take photos is we may be settling for mediocrity.

I’ll also agree it has a lot to do with the user. If the person using ANY kind of device doesn’t know how to adjust the settings on their phone, tablet or camera the photos aren’t going to turn out.

However, would you rather exceed your sellers expectations or settle for mediocrity?

I prefer to exceed my sellers expectations. Which is a big reason why I started creating and writing my own market reports and have been really happy with the results, which I’ll discuss another time. My thought is, “what ever I can do to separate myself from the pack the better.” Which is why I made the decision to purchase a SLR Camera along with a wide angle lens and a class on how to use the camera and adjust the settings, so I could make sure my photos look good, not just ok. When I get busier I’ll switch to hiring someone to take the photos, but for now I would rather save the money and do as many tasks as I can myself.

I look at photos as a component of my marketing resume. Photos are out there in the open for everyone to see. If someone had to choose between two or more agents I would think the agents with a better marketing presentation (better quality of photos) would more likely win out over those with mediocre photos.

Below is a photo example of a phone versus a SLR Camera. I turned the flash off on the camera since the phone didn’t flash. I let the camera automatically decide how long to leave the aperture open. Everything else was the same for my “controlled experiment”.

Droid Ally vs. SLR Canon Rebel XS with a basic lens