Find your perfect lens for real estate photography.

Top tips for picking the best lens for your real estate photo shoot.

Real estate photography can be tricky. You've got to capture what an entire structure feels like, inside and out. That includes compelling staging, appealing lighting, and a cohesive approach that helps guide the viewer through the space. It also includes the property itself, whether it’s a house and yard, an apartment building, a commercial property, or a large piece of land. And finally, it includes the context. What's the neighborhood like? Where does the property sit?

There's a lot to consider — that's why it's helpful to prep yourself for your real estatephotoshootwith these tips. Learn more about what to capture and what lens to use to do it best.

The best lens for each angle.

If you're a new real estate photographer, you might want to try a zoom lens. This lens type will auto-adjust as you move throughout the property, ensuring you're capturing the best angles and perspectives. However, if you're interested in fine-tuning your approach, explore some of these recommended lenses for each property area.

• Indoor shots of rooms and spaces. For building interiors, you'll want to capture the full vibe of each room and corner. This means a mix of wide-angle lenses to fit most of the space into your frame and short to medium-telephoto lenses to encapsulate the details that make the space unique. Meet in the middle with a standard lens and a focal length between 35 and 85 mm to get the best combination of perspective and detail. Wide-angle lenses can be good here, too — especially if the rooms are large. However, don't go so wide that you end up with a distorted fisheye effect.
• Outdoor streetscapes for contextual detail. In this type of shot, you capture the street, the surrounding neighborhood, and the outside of the home or business. The goal is to give the viewer a sense of the building's entire exterior within the context of its surrounding area. Try a wide-angle lens for a more sweeping, all-encompassing perspective. A focal length between 14 and 35 mm is best. Additionally, consider a tilt-shift lens. While on the pricey side, this lens is a great option for keeping the vertical lines of the property by solving for any perspective distortions in real-time. It's also an excellent choice if you're doing real estate photography in a city chock-full of high-rises and straight lines.
• Property shots. To get a full sense of the property — be it a ranch, mansion, estate, big backyard with a pool, farm, or more — try a whole new perspective. Drone photography is a unique, easy (and fun) way to capture the property from above. Try it out and see how it elevates your shots.

More top real estate photography tips.

With the right lens picked out for your photoshoot, keep some of these tips in mind to get your composition just right.

• Lighting. Your lighting is critical, especially for interiors. A bright, well-lit space looks bigger and more open and inviting than a dark, closed-off one. Take your photographs on a sunny day, when light is streaming in. And make use of artificial lighting behind your camera, too.
• Windows. In a similar vein, play up the building's windows. Shooting inside the building with a view toward the outside helps a viewer feel like they're actually in the space while also giving a fun perspective on the building's view and immediate surroundings. This technique also opens up the space even more.

Want more techniques for capturing eye-catching real estate photos? Discover the possibilities, and then check out Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom for masterful editing.