Over the years it’s become the holy grail amongst the vast majority of real estate agents and their photographers that wider is better. The justification is that a super wide angle field of view shows more and makes the space look larger. For several years while contracting with a large real estate media company I accepted the dogma. At the same time, my experience as a commercial advertising photographer kept me frustrated that these images were documenting the space rather than advertising it. Finally I gave in to my frustration, partly when one of my clients asked me to quit making rooms look like airplane hangers. This led to an opportunity to provide a comparison to a large brokerage marketing VP when doing a shoot for them to demonstrate the “luxury” real estate photography capabilities for the media company. Apparently another photographer had shot the same property and the brokerage was not happy with the results. They looked too “real estate”. The media company’s COO asked me to shoot the house. At the time I was unaware that another photographer had already done a shoot. While there I did a set of images to illustrate for the client how focal length, when shot from the same camera position, affected perspective. The focal range for the test is from 14mm to 35mm. The range of a super wide angle zoom used by most real estate photographers.

An important consideration this test does not address is camera to subject distance. The example shots were all shot from the same camera position. Being able to move the camera back and use a longer focal length is always preferable.

Here is the comparison for your review. Enjoy !!