Where do you begin when you are setting up your shots for a real estate video shoot? You’d never run your camera on Auto for stills, so why would you ever leave your video image to chance with anything but manual settings. Having a good place to start is key. Let’s dive into our basic settings and the thought process for what to adjust and when.
Video Format – 4k, 1080p, 720p?
You have so many choices, depending on your camera, on what file format you will shoot in. Do you want to shoot 4k? Maybe 1080p60? Consider your final delivery and the platforms the video will be viewed on.
Almost all of our work is shown and marketed on Facebook. Knowing this, we shoot entirely in 1080p60 for our ground level footage and 4k60 for drone. This allows us to slow any shot by 50% and still have a completely smooth render. If your camera does not shoot 1080p60, you will have to be even more careful with movements and staying smooth. Cutting a 60fps clip to 50% will often smooth out small shaky movements and stop you from needing any stabilization in post (ex. Adobe’s Warp Stabilizer). As you will see below, your frame rate will impact your shutter speed but more on that later.
Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO
As I went over in the previous article (Exposing Interiors for Real Estate Video), you will most likely be using your histogram to set your exposure. Adjustments in your aperture, shutter speed, and ISO will all impact how your image is exposed and what the final image quality looks likes. Taking into consideration what each adjustment will make can go a long way to improving your final image.
Shutter Speed
The general, almost gold standard, is to set your shutter speed at 2x your frame rate. So if you are shooting 1080p and 60fps, you would want your shutter speed to remain constant at 1/120th. This produces the most natural motion blur and looks very pleasing to the eye. Too fast of shutter speed and you will lose motion blur (think old war movies), too slow and you won’t have a clear image due to too much motion blur.
(*Note for Sony Slog2 shooters – Rarely will we break this rule, but you can something crank up the shutter speed to tame an over exposed exterior when shooting in Slog2 with its 1600 ISO. If the clip is too sharp, you can add motion blur back in After Effects.)
Aperture
Aperture comes down to knowing your lens. You may be tempted to open up your lens to draw in more light, but you have to be sure that your image isn’t going to get soft. We run a fairly standard f/5.6-6.1 for interiors. Running Canon glass, this is a nice sweet spot in our experience. We have associates that run f/2.8 and have great, sharp images, so know your lens.
For exteriors, we will often run f/10+ to avoid having to break out an ND filter. In Slog2, we experienced some bad color artifacts even with high quality ND filters. To stay consistent, we tighten up the aperture and dial in the exposure with the lowest ISO we can run and sometimes a faster shutter.
ISO
ISO is the real champ for our team. We shoot all our RE videos on Sony’s A7sii. The camera is a low light champ and has an amazing ISO range. Consistently we will shoot between 1600 and 25600 ISO for homes. This produces very useable footage when exposed properly and allows us to shoot without bringing in extra lighting.
With our shutter locked at 1/125th and aperture at f5.6, we dial in the right exposure for our shots by simply adjusting the ISO. You need to once again know your rig and know the limits of your ISO. From old Canon video days, I remember being a little worried to get to 3200 ISO, now that would be low! Get your camera out, test – test – test – and test again. See what you can push and still get useable footage.
Putting it all together! Your Video Setting Cheat Sheet
For real estate video, you can use the following as a quick starting guide to setting your exposure.
4k or 1080p – 60FPS
Shutter – 1/120th or 1/125th
Aperture – f/5.6 (Or as wide as you can go and know it’s sharp.)
ISO – Dial in to set a proper exposure (See Exposing Interiors for Real Estate Video)
4k or 1080p – 30FPS
Shutter – 1/60th
Aperture – f/5.6 (Or as wide as you can go and know it’s sharp.)
ISO – Dial in to set a proper exposure – it will be lower than shooting 60FPS since your frame rate is slower.
Considerations for outside – tighten up your aperture and lower your ISO. Exteriors are great since we are rarely hurting for light.
I see articles from you here on video gear, pricing, camera settings, getting smooth gimbal footage, video exposure, and music selection.
Forgive me if you already have but, I think you need to take a step back and write about how you define real estate video. Based on your articles on Shooting Spaces, it seems that you believe RE video is 100% smooth, floaty gimbal shots. Maybe that’s not a bad thing, but what about other kinds of shots? Do you use a gimbal for everything? HOW do you utilize a gimbal? Walk-through style? What about more traditional camera movements? Or, if you think 100% gimbal is the way to go, then tell us why.
Step back even further—why we should be getting into video at all? What does it do for our clients that photos don’t?
Hey Colin, thanks for the input. I will definitely write that up. And yes, you are picking up some of what we do. For our price point, we shoot entirely on a gimbal. So on the very basic shoots, they are all wide shots. We may move closer and show some features, but it is all a video walkthrough. We want to balance a really practical view of the home (how rooms/spaces connect) while still being artistic. On some higher end listings, we will use other focal lengths and a slider, but due to our price point and time constraints, that is not our norm.
I will address this in more depth, but IMO video does a lot more than just photos to show exactly how the home is laid out. Photos and video really work together. It adds another engaging marketing tool for the agent and plays very well on paid advertising via FB and other channels. We show agents how to use paid advertising with the video and to use the link to our photos as the call to action. Ex – Video in Post and the text is “You won’t want to miss this stunning lakeshore home. 5 BD | 3 BA | 3,000 sqft. To see the full listing, click: http://www.zillow.com/…..”
To the article specifically, slowing down 60FPS video definitely helps to smooth it out but is not without some trade offs. First of all, do you want everything to have that slo-mo look? For most RE video, it’s probably desirable, but it is a specific aesthetic. Second, you need to account for the timing difference. If you want your shot to specifically go from A to B, it’ll take twice as long when you slow the footage down. Yes, you could speed ramp, but speed ramping has even more of a “look” (hello, youtube generation!) that gets old fast.
How do you work around these limits David?
You want the ability to slow it down. So 60 fps can’t be a replacement for shooting well and moving well, but it can save shots. Also, a faster moving shot cut to 50% can still look normal pace if there aren’t tells like a fan for example.
Oh and we love speed ramping 🙂 So, that makes that point A to B (if you can ninja walk well) move really fast. But again, you are right, it’s personal preference and what your clients want. We have clients that we edit in a more slow and controlled fashion and others we shoot and edit with more gimmicks and trendy tools. As long as the client is happy and booking, we love it!
You can employ this trick with 30fps > 24fps as well, just to a lesser degree. I use this all the time—I’ll shoot 4k 30fps on my EOS R, and slow it down to 24fps. I would probably prefer shooting in 1080p 60fps, but unfortunately my gimbal (Crane v2) cannot handle my FF wide angle lens. I use a much lighter EF-S lens when shooting in 4k, but for some reason you can’t shoot at 60fps in 1080p when in crop mode. It’s an annoying limitation on an otherwise nearly ideal camera for RE. I’ll probably upgrade to the Ronin S when it makes business sense to do so.
can you shoot not in crop mode and just crop in post?
Also, I’m sure many here are asking, “what’s a slog profile?” An article on log footage would probably be pretty useful to many. What is it? Why should we be using it? What are some tips for using it? What are the differences between S-log, C-log, F-log, etc…?
I know I would benefit from a RE focused article on log footage? I just started using it on my EOS R and it’s been difficult to understand how best to work with Clog.
You are giving me great ideas! Thank you 🙂
S-log is just Sony’s log profile. Many professional DSLRs that are aimed at video have it. I think I could do a post on even the general idea of shooting in a flat profile.
Do you use autofocus? What focal length typically would you use for interiors?
No, we set our lens to infinite and at f/4 or so everything is in focus all the time.
Nobody talks about how to focus video on a gimbal for real estate walkthrough videos, can you comment on this?
Hey Jack,
With most wide angles you are focusing for infinity and not touching it. Then everything will be in focus at infinity and past. For detail shots, how your camera and gimbal at the distance you want to be from your foreground subject, focus and then run your shot. We only manually focus, so focus peaking is your friend.
There are options for wireless focus follows but that IMO is too much work for a std real estate shoot. We use them on a lot of coorperate work and will even use wireless video to have a focus puller seperate from the gimbal operator that just pulls focus to the subject.