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Some of the most amazing drone images in this year's contest. There are a few different categories in different skill levels that were submitted to. The categories were "Drones in Use", "360 Photos" and "Beauty". The skill levels ranged from Professional to Enthusiast.
See the winners here
With the help of the Phantom 3 Standard I have captured some amazing aerial photos and videos of various properties around the Seattle ad Bellevue area. See more details here.
In January, Kodak announced the they will be bringing back the all time classic Ektachrome film stock! This is great news! I have loved their Ektar 100 and Portra 400 in both 35mm and medium format. With the addition of Ektachrome to their lineup of film stocks, they will have the perfect trifecta.
It's so amazing the film stocks are being re-released into the market that has been dominated by digital cameras for two decades. I'm looking forward to seeing the results of this medium.
See all the details of the anouncement here.
After NAB 2016 the whole post production industry was buzzing with excitement about the new release of Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve 12.5 update. And with good intentions that this was going to be that "game changer" all-in-one tools for editing, color, and distribution.
The massive overhaul of the software was impressive and perfectly timed for those who were desperately need a refresh from the older version. With a feature list over a mile long, and some long awaited basic tools that we all needed, this is once of the best tools in the industry.
I can honestly say after using DaVinci on multiple films, corporate communication videos, and television spots, that I can always improve my workflow and sharpen my skill set. That's why I have always kept an open mind with learning new tools and skills to stay sharp on the state of the art software and workflows.
One of the best ways to capture an interior Real Estate photo, is the use the HDR exposure bracketing technique, on a DSLR camera. What this allows you to do is to take multiple images with different exposure values that properly allow the best shutter speed for the mid-tones, shadows, and highlights. With the use of a tripod and a timed release of the shutter, you do not need to manual fire it off every time. Instead, set your settings and define the level of bracket exposure then take the series of shots.
Once you get your images captured, then you must bled them together in a post processing editing application, like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Lightroom. There you will define all of your tone mapping setting and fine tune the exposure to get the perfect image. Ideally this will help for taking interior locations with bright windows, because the light meter on the DSLR isn't smart enough to not under exposure the rest of your scene when it's compensating for the amount of light coming in through the windows.
Take a look at a few examples below and on the Real Estate page.
With the fierce competition between GoPro and DJI, for the collapsible compact design, DJI has recently release their new Mavic Pro. This is a direct response to GoPro's new Karma quadcopter. both have the collapsing design to fold the rotor arm into the body. The main drawback to the GoPro design is that there is no included camera, you have to supply your own GoPro. Now once you outfit the GoPro Karma with a camera, you are looking at relative same price point of $1000, but it's not "ready to fly" out of the box like the the Mavic Pro.
One of my favorite mobile Image editors is googles snapseed. I've been using this app for quite a long time and I'm very happy with the results I get it. It has a lot of features that you can tune to get the image to look exactly the way you want it. They constantly keep updating it and adding new features so it's a really good tool to help you make the best out your images.
A lot of people expect most of the real estate listings to have a lot of daytime photos and interior but one of the more unique views are the shots that are taken at dusk in the evening. This view of your home will make your listing stand out even more than your competitors and it will get your listing up to $20,000 more in the Seattle market. One thing that I do that makes the twilight real estate photography stand out from the normal images that you see on most of the listings is using a high dynamic range composition of shadows mid tones and highlights to capture the best exposure. Here are a couple examples of high dynamic range twilight real estate photography.
I recently passed the FAA Part 107 test, to receive my commercial drone operators license. Now I'm officially licensed and commercially ready to take to the skies (where permitted). In the fleet I currently have a DJI Phantom 3 Standard, capable of 12MP HDR images, and 2.7K HD video.
One thing that I really love about using an aerial drone to capture photography and video is that you can get some very unique angles that you were able to get from the ground. And that will increase your production value, and get you a much better end product.
