Digital cameras are not that much different than any other commodity .... you seem to get what you pay for. So, when it comes to digital cameras and equipment, there are a wide variety of options.

With the real estate market in it's current state, most agent's aren't interested in spending a lot of money on a new digital camera, and many worry about the technical requirements for using it. We won't recommend equipment that we haven't tested ourselves, but we certainly encourage you to share your experience with various digital cameras and equipment here.

We recently purchased a Panasonic Lumix FX35 10.1 Megapixel Point and Shoot Camera for testing purposes.



We're quite pleased with it. The key feature of this camera, and the single most important thing to consider when purchasing a camera to shoot home interiors, is it's 25mm wide-angle lens. 35mm lenses are simply not wide enough to adequately market a home. 50mm shots tend to result in a picture of a chair or end table when you thought you could show a room. For best results in shooting interior shots, we recommend that your lens be no more than 28mm. Generally speaking, the lower the better.

This is a shot taken with the Lumix FX35.



Now, here's the same shot with a Nikon D80 with 12mm Nikkor Lens and SB800 Speedlight.



Of course, the Nikon D80 and 12mm Nikkor Lens combination results in a much wider and higher quality image, but the cost of this equipment is approximately $2,000.

The Panasonic FX35 currently sells for $349 or less.

Nikon S610 - another good camera option for real estate professionals.

Coming in about $100 less than the Panasonic FX-35 is the Nikon Coolpix S610. Nikon has a long standing reputation for excellence in camera manufacturing, and this camera falls in the "affordable" range for most real estate professionals.

The Coolpix S610 is feature-rich. See below.

The S610 is small enough to carrie in a shirt-pocket.

Although real estate professionals rarely need hard-copy prints of their real estate shots, the Coolpix S610 is a 10.0 megapixel camera, allowing high quality prints as large as 16 X 20 inches.

The S610 has a 4x Wide-Angle Zoom-NIKKOR Glass Lens. Wide-angle, in this case, means 28mm. Of course, the Panasonic Lumix FX35 is equipped with a 25mm lens that's a bit wider than the 28mm on the Coolpix S610. Most real estate photography experts believe that a lens should be at least as wide as 28mm for shooting real estate interior shots. As far as we're concerned, Nikon and Canon together set the industry standards for lens quality.

The S610's 3.0-inch Wide-Angle of View High Resloution LCD makes it easier to critique your images while their still in the camera. In addition, the LCD display screen has a high-contrast and anti-reflection coating designed to assist in clear viewing, especially in direct sunlight.

Optical VR Image Stabilization is designed to compensate for camera shake and blur prevention. This should help in producing sharper images especially in low light conditions.

The S610 uses Nikon Scene Auto Selector technology that automatically adjusts settings for the best possible results.

Active Child Mode is designed to track a moving subject to ensure sharp focus. Nikon claims that the camera will automatically track a moving subject, even if it temporarily moves out of the frame.

Of couse, some of the features that we're highlighting here won't be useful when shooting your listing images, but they might come in handy in other situations, i.e. family shots, awards ceremonies, special events, etc. For example, the very neat new feature called Smile Shutter.
According to Nikon, the Smile Shutter feature will automatically take the shot when it detects the smile on a subject. If it works as they say, that's a real cool feature. Don't you think?

Auto adjusts up to ISO 3200 - This feature should make it easier to continue shooting even in low light conditions, and produce sharper, more natural-looking images in these conditions.

Other Nikon Image Innovations included in the S610 are In-Camera Red-Eye Fix which is said to look for and fix most instances of red-eye due to flash. Face Priority AF is said to find and focus on up to 12 faces in a group photo. D-Lighing provides a way to lighten-up those images that are too dark. It apparently does this by enhancing the underexposed areas of the picture only, and making no change to the properly exposed areas of the image.

The Nikon S610 is equipped with 16 Scene Modes. These include: Food, Portrait, Landscape, Sports, Night-Portrait, Party/Indoor, Beach/Snow, Sunset, Dusk/Dawn, Night Landscape, Close-up, Panorama Assist, Museum, Fireworks Show, Copy or Back Light modes. When these modes are used, the camera will automatically adjust for these shooting situations. Simply said, it eliminates the guess work.

High Quality TV Movies with Sound - Length of movie(s) is only limited by the amount of free space on your SD/SDHC Card. The camera can be connected directly to your TV for movie viewing.

The Nikon S610 is currently available in Smoke Grey, Deep Red and Midnight Black.

For more information on this camer and other Nikon products, go to http://www.nikonusa.com

Lumix is a great brand choice.
The new LX3 offers professional features and image quality at a reasonable price. Nice wide angle lens and fantastic low light abilty.

As a Real Estate Professional shopping for a digital camera, you should always look at the all those tiny numbers on the lens barrel of a camera before considering whether it's the right camera for you, but WHAT DO THEY MEAN?

To explain, let's consider the relatively new Panasonic FX35. The equivalent focal length of the Panasonic FX-35 is 25mm (approximately 10% wider than the more common 28mm lens), which provides a pretty good viewing angle for most interior real estate shots. "Equivalent" means equivalent to a 35mm film camera. The FX35 has enough lens speed (f/2.8 to f/5.6) and enough viewing angle (true ultra-wide angle 25mm) to do a pretty darn good job shooting real estate interior shots.

The MEGA O.I.S. refers to Panasonic's image stabilization technology (Optical Image Stabilization) that enhances the photographer's ability to shoot hand-held shots in low light conditions with less possibility of blurring the image due to camera-shake.

The Leica lens actually zooms from 4.4mm to 17.6mm; a 4X zoom ratio. Leica is a well established camera and lens manufacturer in Germany. The camera is capable of a 25mm equivalent focal length at the 4.4mm position.

The f/stop (light gathering capability) of the FX35's lens is f2.8 (an excellent low light capability).

ASPH refers to the aspherical lens design. Without going into a great deal of boring detail, aspheric optics allow Leica to manufacture lighter weight lenses while maintaining very high image quality.