Cameras are a necessity for the real estate professional, especially portable, high quality cameras that integrate well with our internet social media. The iPhone 4S and 5 both sport a powerful 8 megapixel camera that takes great pictures and integrates well with the web to show off beautiful listings, neighborhood atmospheres, and enticing community events.
Here are a few tips to take quality iPhone pictures and efficiently use your iPhone camera to best benefit your real estate business.
1. Use Location Services – The iPhone camera can save your geographical location when you take a picture, and will group your photos by location. This will automatically keep all of your listing pictures together, even if you snap them on separate occasions.
To turn on location services for your camera, go to Settings->Location Services and toggle the button next to the Camera icon to “On”. Then choose Photos->Places to see a handy map of all locations and the photos in each.
2. Organize with Albums – Have you had the “needle in a haystack” moment when searching through the 2000 pictures on your camera roll for a certain photo? In conjunction with the geo location tool, you can easily make albums for each of your listings or different neighborhoods.
To move multiple photos to albums, choose Photos->Camera Roll and then click the envelope icon in the upper right corner. Click on the pictures that you want to group together, and add the bottom of the screen; click the “Add to” button, where you can create a new album.
3. Quality Pictures – You don’t need to put up with blurry pictures, unfavorable exposure, and improper focus. There are several items to take notice of:
- HDR – Click Camera->Options->HDR ON to enable the High Dynamic Range feature if you are having exposure issues, particularly in photos with very light and very dark areas. Your camera automatically takes 3 different pictures of the same subject, with different exposures, and merges them to get the best overall exposure
- Use the Focus – You can control the focus and exposure in different areas of your picture. Tap the most important part of your picture, and the camera will enhance it. A blue box will appear on the screen to show the focus zone.
- Release to Snap – The iPhone camera does not snap a photo when you press the camera button, but instead when you release it. This is a handy feature to decrease blurry photos caused by tapping the screen to take a picture. You can hold down the camera button until the phone is still and focused; then release to snap. Other options for snapping a picture: Press the Volume Up button on the side of the iPhone, or the Volume Up button on your iPhone headset.
- Don’t Over-Zoom – By tapping or pinching the screen, you can access the zoom function to get a tighter shot of your subject. Consider that this will affect the resolution of your photo, and it may be better to take a wider view and crop it later.
- Quick Edits – There are several photo editing tools right on the iPhone: Red eye reduction, cropping, rotation and the auto-enhance feature, which gives your photo a quick once over. There are also apps like iPhoto that you can download to enhance your photo editing right on your iPhone.
4. Other Business Uses – There are many other business uses for your iPhone’s camera. Get creative and take advantage of its portability and easy access to the web and MMS (3G MultiMedia text Messaging ).
- Download an expense management app, such as Xpense Tracker, where you can record an electronic copy of your receipts with your camera and do away with cumbersome paper management.
- Don’t forget the iPhone’s camcorder abilities! Record a quick one-minute video on your farm neighborhood on a sunny day, or an “Instant Update” on the local real estate market. Then send it straight to your YouTube account by clicking the envelope icon at the bottom of the screen of your chosen video in your camera roll.
- Too busy to type out an email or text message on your phone? Use the camera’s web cam feature to record a short personal message and send via email to a contact. Find your video in your camera roll and choose “Email Video” from the envelope icon.
We at REVStaffing have lots of ideas to help you reach your business goals! Discover today how we dramatically boost our clients’ productivity. Make your next step towards better organization to shoot us an email or give us a call for a free needs analysis. We’ll be happy to discuss ALL of your unique 2012 business needs; ask how we can give your business a LIFT! Be sure to visit our website, and “like” us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/RevstaffingVAs.