No matter how the photos are taken (wide-angle or otherwise), nothing you see online is going to compare with the way the house looks when you walk into it.

The purpose of photos on a listing is to give you an idea of how the rooms look. In smaller rooms (like bathrooms), a wide-angle lens is the only way to show the whole room in one shot.

Don't judge a house solely by the photos. I much prefer a floor plan to photos, because I'm not "into" staging, and will be able to see how my furniture would fit into the space.

Some wide angle shots are misleading ... others are needed.

I had to use wide angle in bathrooms and bedrooms to show in the pictures what the eye would show (humans have a 110-115 degree field of view). But I did the minimum necessary AND I corrected them for distortion.

I also had to use wide angle to show the great room accurately - there's a limit to how far back you can stand to get a 2-story fireplace. But again, I cropped to keep them as realistic as possible.

I always felt like I could tell the photos were deceptive wide angle shots. Usually something was distorted like a microwave for example. Plus I always looked at the room dimensions in the listing which sometimes didn't jive with the spacious room appearance. I always expect that photos have been taken and selected to highlight the best features of the property and that there may be some unfavorable surprises.

I think you just need to decide which homes appear to have the location/features you want and go look in person. Don't rule in or out based on the photos.

Happy new year everyone!

So I should limit the input from these photos to mainly orientation and room layout? In my mind, a 2200 sq ft home, which is about double the a size of our home, wouldn't have about the same size living rooms, bathrooms smaller kitchen etc. This house had some additional smaller bedroom additions to increase size, but one was being used as a walk-in closet!

It seems like few of the listings I'm looking at have a floor plan or room dimensions, unfortunately; I agree those would provide a lot of info.

Maybe as we move forward and continue to look at homes I'll get a better sense of things. It was just such a surprise! Even DH was somewhat dismayed by the photos vs. in-person.

Sometimes, as was posted above, the only way to really show the whole space is using wide lenses; otherwise I don't find these helpful. It's not that they are misleading as much as they are distorting..

I hate our own listing, lol, because of this wide lenses thing. Distorting, and too bright; the colors are jarring..I truly hate it myself, tried to talk to the realtor about retaking the pics or even just cropping/photo-shopping them a bit to make them less jarring..she agrees with me the pictures are not successful but the photographer probably does a certain amount of work per their agreement, I don't know..She also explained to me the pics should be identical to the video tour, and that's already harder, since you need to redo both.

Interestingly the same photographer took the pics of the previous listing of our house:) Those were darker(not dark..just normal colors, not cartoon-ish), not that wide angled, and- last but not least -not staged lol, and I liked them much more. I don't understand why he changed his working mode..if the previous one obviously worked just fine.

..so to me as a seller-it's not that the home disappoints, it's the pictures that are not good enough to bring buyers to look at the place, because they're not giving a true feel of the place, in an obvious way.

When we listed a year ago, I told our realtor that I wanted final approval on all pictures and copy and that there had to be a professional photographer. Just because I hate those distorted pictures. When the photographer (cost to realtor was $75) showed up, I walked her thru the house and explained my concerns. Happily, she was great, and we had wonderful pictures, I battled the realtor on her copy because she wanted to use CAPS EVERYWHERE. Had to get her office mate to gang up on her,,,, she thought she was being cute. Sigh.

I firmly think that all sellers should stand up to the realtors about pictures and copy and not just play dead. Some of the listings I see are horrible.

When we moved to LA from the midwest many years ago, I quickly learned that one does not look for a house by "3BR, 2.5 baths", but by total sq feet. I went to see 3BR, 2.5 bath houses that were so small I could stand in the middle of the LR floor and touch all 4 walls without moving!

Square footage will give you a far better idea of what size a home really is, vs wide angle photos and descriptions of how many rooms.

sushipup I wish I'd read your comment before we listed..:)

The photographer was professional all right..I just somehow never thought I can say "no, I dislike it"..I told her later when the pics were up..much later..and I was afraid to sound ungrateful or something, and took me weeks I think before I finally said I dislike the pics so much..

At least you got to see photos. The 2500sq' house we bought provided only three: exterior from street, living room fireplace, view out of upstairs bedroom. Photos are just a portion of the total info; think of them as clues, rather than the entire story. There is no substitute to seeing a house in person. Good floorplan flow can make some 1900sq' houses feel larger, and flow better, than a choppy house with three hundred more sq'.

That's very true; in my experience, good layout always trumps the square footage; no square footage will compensate enough for a poor layout.

I photograph real estate and use a wide angle for the most part. It's not the widest out there, but 16mm is wider than most. Mainly I use this lens to capture floor to ceiling and not to be deceptive. I have had a few clients ask me to make a room look deceptively larger (mostly kitchens) and I will explain to them the risks in doing so - that the potential buyer will feel deceived when they see it and lose confidence in the seller and begin to question and doubt other things. I really believe it is a big mistake to make the photos grossly inaccurate because it plants seeds of doubt in the buyers mind about how truthful the seller is and you don't want that when it comes to a large investment such as a house.

You can ask your Realtor if the dimensions are available in the full listing. If you are using metrolist the consumer portal does not have all the info (that at least used to be there). Even that can be deceptive however if the layout is choppy.

Thanks for that tip!

Here's a fun study in contrasts. 1st pic is of our kitchen, just before finishing. Wide aisles, at 48". Incredible, kitchen "quadrangle" for cooks. Taken by either me or my contractor.

2nd pic is of the whole room, from the kitchen, by a pro- wide lens, again pre-fnish- built in floating media cabinet on the TV wall, shelves on niches not yet added.

Look how cavernous the 2nd pic looks. Looks like 7' between the main sink to the left (not visible in the photo, and the island. Lol. Also makes the cabinets appear reddish, when they aren't.

I'm not sure that's good marketing, as it gives a false impression of the home- could turn some people off, or could lead to unrealistic expectations, even when they "know" the total square footage.

Two postcards I got of otherwise chopped off looking place up the street used wide angles to make structure and property look hilariously wider - in a manner reminiscent of amusement park mirrors. But the first card, advertising it did give dimensions - and described all the work that had been done on the inside, of what otherwise looks kind of like a small gas station in size and shape. (Second card announced that it sold for $590,000 - astounding when you see it in person, from the road. Also when you know how quickly the real estate signing went from saying For Sale to Sold).

I'd rather see realistic photos, so the house would look BETTER in person. However, requesting room dimensions will be effective too, I can compare to the dimensions of our current home to get a feel for the difference.

Juanita, your second shot looks like you could throw a high school reunion party in there!

THanks for letting me know I can possibly have some say on how my home is photographed, when it comes time to sell this place.

I do remember when my parents sold their home back in 2000 - most listings weren't online, and so the agent only needed a few photos. We'd volunteered some I'd taken, but she declined so her pro could take the shots. Turned out mine were better, so the agent went with mine!

The home we just purchased had horrible pictures, the ONLY reason we even did a drive by on the home was because it had the square footage we wanted. It is very cute in real life but terrible picture. The home across the street and has been for a year and likely will remain for sale, it also has horrible pictures focused on the most nonsensical details.

I'm a buyer with no vision LOL!

But in all seriousness, since posting this thread I've been trying to not look too closely at the photos except to get an idea of layout and expensive remodeling that might be needed (ie cosmetic/livable etc)

We are using Google maps to see how the yard is distributed relative to the house, and comparing # of rooms/sq footage to our current place to get an idea of size. I think we're still in the early stages of just getting a feel for what might be out there -- what's clear to me is that there is nothing perfect out there. SO the more non-perfect I see the more I think I'll be able to know what can be settled on and what might be a deal-breaker.

For me personally, wide angle pictures usually lead to a let down once the actual home is viewed. I recently found a home online that I thought I really liked but feared it would be too large (due to the way the pictures made the rooms feel). But then I saw the actual house and couldn't believe how small the rooms were. It was a total let down. At that point I had wished it was as big as I originally feared.