Transcription
Hey Real Estate photographers, have you ever wondered why your photos are subpar and they don't quite look like the amazing photos that you see on social media and all over the web? It might be something as simple as your camera settings. In today's video, I'll go step by step on what the proper settings are for real estate photography.
Here are your settings for a Canon R6 Mark II for Real Estate photography. The very first thing that you want to do is you want to make sure that your camera is in AV mode, which is Aperture priority for Canon. Hit okay.
And now we'll dig into the menu. On the first page, you want to make sure that your image quality is at Raw. Don't ever shoot in jpeg. We can enable the Dual pixel Raw. We want to have your crop sensor mode at full frame.
We will now go to the second page. This is one of the most important settings. This is your auto exposure bracketing (AEB). Select it, hit set. To set this setting, we'll go into the page and then roll the aperture button, the aperture wheel, and we will roll each exposure out to one stop. The longer notches are one stop, the shorter notches are a half stop. We want to roll all five out to one stop. Hit okay.
ISO speed, we do not want to have the auto. We want your ISO to be at 250. Go back. HDR shooting, have that off. Auto lighting Optimizer, standard is okay. Highlight tone priority, we will have that off. Anti-flicker, will have that off. Metering mode, make sure that's on the entire room, evaluative metering.
White balance, this is a very, very important setting. Do not overlook this setting at all. We'll go to auto white balance. We'll go one step deeper into the setting and go to auto white balance, white priority. If you do not switch this to White priority and leave it in standard or Ambience, all your photos will look yellow and orange. Make sure it's in white priority. We'll go back. As you can see, you see AWB white.
Another huge setting that nobody ever really touches is color space. You do not want to be in sRGB. You're only getting a fraction amount of the color space and color information to the camera. Always switch it to Adobe RGB. This increases your color space information by a million times.
Picture style, this is another setting that a lot of people overlook. Do not have this in auto, auto. You don't want the camera making those adjustments for you. Select picture style, go to standard, go one step deeper by hitting info. We'll go down to contrast and lower it to -2. We'll go to saturation and go to -2. We don't need high contrast or highly saturated images for real estate photography. Go back to menu.
Clarity, we don't need to touch. Lens correction, turn everything on, especially distortion. Optimizer, standard is good. Go back to menu.
Drive mode, huge setting. If you leave your drive mode to single shot, your camera will not bracket. It needs to be in two second timer. That activates the bracketing setting. Leave everything else standard. Oh no, we do not want to release the shutter without card. We will turn that off. Make sure you have a memory card in your camera when you're taking photos. Touch shutter, we want to have that on. That way you're able to take photos and select your furthest darkest point by touching the LCD screen.
Info display, very important settings in this section. We'll go to screen info. We can leave number one and number two off. In number three, we'll go to info. And as you can see here, that the Horizon electronic leveler is on. You always want to have this on. This is how you make sure that your camera is level. We'll click okay. Number four is nice to leave on. That way you can set your composition without any settings and you have a clean screen. Click okay.
Grid display, this is a huge setting. You want to make sure that your grid display lays on rule of thirds. Reason being is when you are taking exterior photos, you want to one, first have your camera height as high as it can go, and then you want to tilt your camera up just slightly. That way you eliminate a lot of the sidewalk, driveway, and street. And you put the bottom line on your rule of thirds on the grid on your camera at the where the bottom of the building is or the bottom of the home. And then your editor will fix the vertical lines. But you don't want to have too much driveway, sidewalk, or street. Go back.
Everything else we can go past. We'll go to the gear icon. File numbering, you want to have continuous. This is where you would format your card once you have delivered all your photos. It's important to set your date, time, and time zone. That way, just in case you have to find a file from 90 days or six months ago, you could possibly search it, search for it by looking up the date and time, not so much the time, but the date. You want to have your beep enabled. That way you can hear your camera when it's counting down on the two second timer and the 10-second timer. Screen brightness, I like to turn this all the way up so I'm able to see it in the bright sun when I'm outside.
Now we'll go to the custom settings. By default, normally Canon cameras come in three shots. When in the number of bracketed shots, you want to have this at five. Another nice setting that I like to adjust is custom buttons. What I like to do is I like to be able to switch back and forth between full frame and crop sensor. What this does is it gives me the capability of having basically two lenses out of one. So it's like having two lenses on your camera. So when I want to individualize a sink or a fireplace or a stove or a special feature like a waterfall, I'll go ahead and switch my camera to crop sensor mode to give me a little extra reach to individualize that special feature. It's especially helpful when photographing an exterior on a busy street. Once in a while, you'll have to then go across the street and set your camera up. And then I'll go to crop sensor mode and zoom in to photograph the exterior. So I'll go ahead and assign crop sensor mode to the star button.
Once in a while, in the dial section, in the custom dials, Canon, they'll assign the front dial to the shutter. I like to have the aperture on the front dial and the shutter will be the aperture. I like to have the shutter in the back, and I like to have the ISO on the rolling dial next to the LCD screen. Go back to settings. Make sure everything is set up properly. Oh yes, power saving. You want to make sure that you have your power saving disabled. If you leave this on, your camera will shut off while you're in the middle of a shoot, and it's quite annoying having to turn your camera back on just when you place your camera down to walk away to make some adjustments or to address something that's in the room. So always keep this disabled.
And power saving, we'll go to the Q mode. Make sure that everything is set as we wanted it. This AF for me is too large. You want to have a one point AF, which is a smaller point. You can be more exact what you want to focus on and what you want to have as your furthest darkest point. One shot is good. Make sure we're shooting in raw. In Q mode, where this is where you can find your drive mode and your two second timer. This is where you can switch between 10-second timer and two-second timer. You'll normally be in two-second timer, but once in a while when you have the camera in a reflection and you don't want to be in the reflection, you never want to be in the reflection, you will then switch to 10-second timer so that that gives you enough time to exit the composition so you're not in it. And then always make sure you switch it back to two-second timer. Metering mode's correct. The entire room. Auto white balance is white priority. We're in standard.
Now that we have everything set, we're at f8, ISO's at 250, we have bracketing on. Now everything is set. We'll go back to the menu, go to the gear icon, and we'll now set these settings to a custom shooting mode. I like to set mine at C3 for Real Estate. Now, every time that you turn your camera off and you go to C3, these settings will always be there. Say you want to shoot parts one day and then you change your settings in your camera, and then you have a real estate shoot the next day, just go to C3 and then everything that we just set up is right here in your camera.
There you have it. Those are the proper settings for Real Estate photography. I hope that was helpful, and I'll see you in the next one.