What sort of camera do you need to take the photos for your holiday property?
Getting the perfect set of photos for your holiday property comes second only to getting the text on the website perfect.
The first thoughts for most people are either that they will get a professional photographer or that they can take them on their digital compact camera. Neither of these are true. The professional photographer will be at your place for, at best, a few hours and even if that happens to be on a day with clear skies, they’ll not be around long enough to get the light just right for all aspects of your property. Even for outside shots you’ll find that there’s a world of difference in the quality of image produced by a “proper” camera compared to a compact and you need that better quality to sell your place.
Where you really notice the difference is in photos taken inside. These two photos were taken on similar days yet the one taken with the compact camera looks pretty dull whilst the one taken with the digital SLR is much brighter and homely. Bearing in mind that these are quite small images and that you’ll probably use larger ones on your site you can see that it’s going to make a significant difference in the overall presentation of your property.
So how much is this going to cost? Well, a decent compact digital runs to around £300 these days and a decent digital SLR is from £400 to £700 although you should add a “bounce flash” if the budget allows for another £100 or so. If you buy at the cheaper end of the range the additional cost is around £200 which will be more than made up in additional bookings from the better quality images. This is, of course, a one-off cost and no matter how many photos you take you won’t be out any more money whereas with a professional photographer you’d be spending a similar amount and would only ever have the one set of photos for your money.
What about the resolution of the camera? Frankly, it doesn’t matter much these days as even the cheapest cameras are coming in at around 5mp and the images that you’re going to use online are going to use only a small fraction of that resolution. What’s more important is the size of the lens and that’s where the SLRs win as the lens is around 4cm (2 inches) across compared to something like 1cm (1/2 inch) on a compact. That equates to a quality improvement of around 15 times so, for example, that little spec of dust on the SLR will appear much smaller than the equivalent spec on the compact.
So what am I using? At the moment I’ve a Nikon D40x (now sold as a D60) and have the SB-600 flash; total cost around £800. Although I don’t use the flash that much it’s very noticeable when I use it to take photos of the rooms and I’m sure that it’s paid for itself already. Having said that, if you don’t want to buy the flash (and at £200 it does seem a touch over the top to take four or five photos) you can usually rent them or buy a cheaper model. The important thing is that it must be a “bounce flash” which means that you need to be able to point the flash at the ceiling rather than taking the photos with the flash pointed in the same direction as the camera: it’s that bouncing of the light off the ceiling that makes the photos more homely.
Why bother? Won’t a professional photographer take better photos anyway? Well, no, they won’t for the simple reason that you can wait around until the sunlight lights the pool perfectly whereas they’ll not be there long enough to do that. Similarly on inside shots you want the room lit by the sun which obviously happens at different times for each of your rooms. Essentially the difference is that you have the time to wait for perfection whereas they have to take the photos in the hour or two that they’re with you. Also, you just couldn’t afford to pay a professional to take photos of all the local attractions for you but if you’ve got the camera it’s not costing you anything to do that.
I’ll be covering just what you should be aiming for in that perfect set of photos next time.
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