Eye-Fi’s iPhone app. Send photos on your iPhone to PropertyPreviews.com

Eye-Fi announced at Macworld that they will be releasing a free iPhone app for users that currently own a Eye-Fi card.  PropertyPreviews happens to be a distribution site for Eye-Fi users.  If you have not tried Eye-Fi it is certainly a great product. If you are taking a lot of photos on the run and would like to streamline your photo upload process, give it a try.  Better yet give it a try with PropertyPreviews.com!!

The new application will let users aggregate all of their photos – from both an iPhone and a digital camera – into organized folders on a computer and to one of 25 online photo sharing and social networking Web sites. iPhone users who own an Eye-Fi card can download the free application from Apple’s App Store up

on release.

“Whether you’re snapping pictures on-the-go with an iPhone or capturing life’s important moments with a digital camera, Eye-Fi will offer one easy way to manage and share all your photos – without docking a gadget or fussing with software,” said Jef Holove, CEO for Eye-Fi. “We are solving another real-world frustration for anyone who takes photos with both devices.”

Using the Eye-Fi application, users can select which iPhone photos to upload and where to share them. As with the Eye-Fi Explore card, photos taken on an iPhone can be automatically tagged with information about where the picture was taken. Users can then view geotagged photos on a digital map and organize photos by location.

PropertyPreviews-10 Tips to improve your photos in 10 posts: Tip #2

Give your listing online curb appeal.  The front photo of a listing is one of the most important photos in my opinion.  If it captures interest, in will lead to the online shopper to go further down the rabbit hole to view and learn more about that listing.

This tip is mainly for listings where the garage is attached to the front of the house.  A garage can take up a good majority of a front photo.  Lets face it – a garage is a garage.  There is nothing great about it, but you need to show it.  Most people will take a front photo straight on giving the house and garage equal line of sight and making the garage appear large.  What we want to achieve with this tip is a different line of sight, but still capturing the whole house and garage.  If the garage is on the left of the house, you want to position yourself all the way to the right of the house.  This way you are focusing on the house, and while the garage is still in your picture, it is not overpowering the house.  This gives your listing online curb appeal.  Thanks for reading and Happy Selling.

Below is an example.  To be fair I used a standard point and shoot camera on this fine overcast day in the North Midwest.

Remember to subscribe to our updates by email or RSS feed.

Cheers,

Tom

CreateHDR: Online site to Create High Dynamic Range images

HDR (High Dynamic Range) images try to highlight every spot in a photo and make it stand out.  Usually to create a HDR image you need Photoshop or a similar desktop application.  CreateHDR.com allows you to upload images from your desktop or Flickr account and create a HDR image from one photo.  Typically HDR images are created from multiple images with different exposure settings.  Currently the site only allows for the JPEG file format to be uploaded.  There is a pro version under construction on the site that will allow for multiple exposure uploads and different file formats.

Not every photo that is uploaded looks good after it has gone through the process.  There is only so much manipulation you can do to a single upload to make it look like a HDR photo.  Take a look at their public gallery and judge for yourself.  I am looking forward to seeing the Pro Version.  I would bookmark this site to watch for further development.

RED: The Revolution the Camera Industry Needs

If you a serious photographic prosumer and contemplating getting a new DSLR and a HD camcorder, consider waiting for the RED Digital Cinema DSMC (Digital Stills and Motion Camera) scheduled for release in early 2009.  Earlier this year Nikon and Canon released DSLR’s that were capable of recording in HD (Nikon D90 and Canon EOS 5d Mark II).  While both these cameras are excellent for still photography, their HD recording capabilities are not enough to be considered a camcorder replacement.

On November 13, 2008, Red announced the Scarlet and EPIC lines.  Basically the Scarlet and the Epic are the Brain of the camera from which you can build upon your setup.  If you want to have more of a DSLR or camcorder experience, the choice is yours to do either or both.  There are over 2,251,799,813,685,248 configurations as of today.  Think of it as the Lego project, build it to fit your needs.  All the parts are interchangeable.  If you need to upgrade the Brain (which is the processor) in a few years, the rest of your camera is still useable with your new upgrade.  If you select the S35 Brain, you can also use Nikon or Canon Mount lenses.  If Nikon and Canon mounts are a must, the S35 Brain is pricey at $7000.  If not, there are less expensive models.  Comparatively, if you looked at the cost of separately buying a DSLR and a HD camcorder, the cost for the RED is not out of line, plus you have the ability to incrementally upgrade.   RED has Scarlet Brains (processors) currently at $2500 to $12000.   There will also be a fixed 8X Scarlet Brain under $2500.

The good news for consumers is RED is going to do to the camera industry what Apple did to the cell phone industry with the iPhone.  This radical innovation is going to drive manufacturers to offer similar options to their camera lines and hopefully get to a point where the camera product is not obsolete after 18 months.  For now the average consumer will see no change, but the changes should start trickling down into the consumer camera equipment in the next year or two.  At the rate technology changes,  this is the camera revolution I have been waiting for.  Only one question remains for me…….How do I convince my wife?

Free Online Photo Editor-FotoFlexer

The standard for photo editing still remains Adobe Photoshop.  However, using Photoshop does require a learning curve to use and it is expensive.  Photoshop elements $99 & Photoshop CS3 $999.  My favorite webapp for editing photos is FotoFlexer and it is FREE!!!.

FotoFlexer is a free online we application that allows you to upload images from you computer or other online photo applications like (Facebook, Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, and more)  to FotoFlex for editing.  There are no programs to buy and no subscribtions costs.  The user interface is easy to navigate.  Once your photo is uploaded there are options to crop, resize, add text, and many more.  What is also an advantage is you are able to save the file as a jpeg or png back to any destination you choose. (Desktop, Facebook, etc.)  Give it a try, I think you will find it useful for when you need a quick photo modification.

Remember to subscribe to our RSS feed or email updates to get all of our latest posts.  Happy Selling!!

PropertyPreviews-10 tips to improve your photos in 10 posts: Tip #1

One of the main categories we want to explore in the PropertyPreviews blog is to help Real Estate professionals show their listing in the best possible way. We want your prospects to want to see your listing in person.  In the next 10 photography blog posts we will give you tips you can use today to produce engaging photos.

Tip #1:  Prepping the house just before you are ready to shoot. I know there may be some listings where there is just no hope in making it look appealing. However, in this tip I’m not asking you to clean and rearrange the whole house.  It is up to you to explain to your clients your expectations before you arrive at their home to take photos.  There are a couple small prepping changes that go a long way to make the home look more appealing.  First, go throughout the home and turn on all the lights possible.  A well lit house is always going to look more appealing in a picture.  The second easy home prep tip is to remove all trash cans from the view of the camera.  Garbage is never an eye appealing item, and can make a kitchen look dirty at a brief glance.  Thirdly, put all toilet seat lids down.  Bathroom shots are hard enough, an exposed toilet seat is not going to make the picture look any better.  These may seem like small tasks, but we see many pictures that come into PropertyPreviews.com that could use these tips to make their free video look even better.

Remember to subscribe to our RSS feed or email updates to get all of our latest posts.  Happy Selling!!