How to take real estate photos with an iPhone

For good real estate photos with an iPhone, turn on Grid and Level. Shoot horizontally with the 0.5x lens from a corner, holding the phone at about light-switch height. Keep it level so the walls stay straight. Turn on every light and open every blind, then tap a wall to set exposure instead of tapping the window. Most of what separates a phone listing from a hired photographer's comes down to those habits.

Below are the exact settings, where to stand, and the mistakes buyers spot before they read the price.

Set up the camera before you get to the house

Set up the iPhone once and leave it.

• In iPhone Settings, open Camera and turn on Grid and Level. Apple's guide puts both under the same switch. The level draws a line across the middle of the frame to show whether the phone is tilted left or right. Line it up for every shot.
• Keep Lens Correction on. You'll find it in Settings, then Camera. It's on by default, and Apple says it adjusts Ultra Wide photos for more natural results. Turn it back on if someone switched it off. You'll use the 0.5x lens for most rooms.
• Leave HDR on automatic. By default the iPhone blends several exposures when a scene contains bright and dark areas. A living room with a picture window fits that description. Leave it alone.
• Before the first shot, clean the lens. A thumbprint on the 0.5x lens puts a soft haze over every window. Wipe it on your shirt, then do it again after the phone's been in your pocket.

Newer Pro models can shoot 48 MP files if you turn on Resolution Control under Settings, Camera, Formats. The files are sharper but much bigger, and an MLS will compress them anyway. I leave it off for listing work.

Where to stand and how to hold the phone

Shoot from a corner, not the doorway

Walk into the room and put your back in the corner opposite the most interesting wall. From there, the 0.5x lens sees two full walls, giving the room depth. A doorway usually leaves you with one flat wall and the side of a door frame.

Take one shot from that corner. Take another from the opposite corner if the room is big enough to earn it. A small bedroom needs one.

Hold it at light-switch height

Eye level is too high. From 5 feet up, you either point the iPhone down at the floor, making the room look smaller, or tilt it up to fit the furniture and make the walls lean. Lower it to light-switch height, roughly chest height for most people. Bend your knees. It feels wrong for the first few rooms, then it doesn't.

In kitchens, hold the iPhone a little higher so countertops look like surfaces rather than edges. Bathrooms may leave you standing in the tub or doorway. Work with the space you've got, but keep the phone level.

Keep the phone level, always

Keeping the iPhone level matters more than anything else on this page. Tilt it down and the walls lean in at the bottom. Tilt it up and they fall outward at the top. Buyers may not be able to name the problem, but they feel it. Hold the phone upright in both directions: use the level line for left to right, then line up a door frame or wall corner with a vertical grid line for front to back. If those two lines run parallel, you're square.

If the room won't fit in the 0.5x frame, back up or change corners. Don't tilt. For more on this, see how to fix leaning vertical lines.

Horizontal only

Turn the iPhone sideways for every shot. Listing sites use a horizontal frame, so a vertical photo gets gray bars on both sides.

What the 0.5x lens does well and badly

The ultra-wide is why a phone works for this job at all. It's also where most phone listings go wrong.

On 0.5x an 11 by 12 foot bedroom fits in one frame, bed and window and closet door. No other lens on the phone manages that.

Where it hurts you:

• It stretches anything near the edge of the frame. A chair looks wider than it is; a round table goes oval. Keep the important furniture toward the middle.
• It exaggerates depth, making a small room look noticeably bigger. That feels like a win until a buyer walks in and feels misled. Don't wedge yourself into a closet to squeeze one more foot of floor into the shot.
• It's softer than the main lens in the corners and in low light. Give it as much light as you can.

Switch to 1x for details like a range hood or a tile backsplash. The main lens is sharper and distorts far less.

Light: the part people skip

Turn on every light, open every blind

Turn on every lamp and overhead light. Under-cabinet strips too. Open the blinds fully and pull the slats out of the frame if you can. A dark corner makes a room look small and gloomy in a listing photo.

Warm yellow bulbs mixed with cool daylight can leave clashing colors on the walls. I keep the lights on anyway. A slight warm cast is easy to correct later; a room lit by one window is harder to save. If your shots are dark, here's how to fix dark real estate photos.

Set exposure on the wall, then lock it

Point the iPhone at a room with a bright window and it will expose for the window, leaving the interior dark. Tap a wall or the floor instead, then drag up or down beside the focus square to brighten or darken the shot. To keep that setting, touch and hold until AE/AF Lock appears. This locks focus and exposure for the next shots. Tap anywhere to release it.

You'll lose some window detail in a single iPhone shot. That's normal. The room should look like the room.

Time of day

For the front exterior, shoot when the sun is on the facade: morning for east-facing homes, afternoon for west-facing ones. With the sun behind the house, the front becomes a dark shape against a bright sky.

Inside, bright overcast is the easiest light you'll get. On a clear day, avoid the hour when sunlight throws hard rectangles across the floor. Those patches blow out and draw the eye away from the room.

Hold still

In dim rooms the shutter stays open longer. Brace your elbows against your body or lean on a door frame. Breathe out before you tap. A small phone tripod with a Bluetooth remote fixes the movement problem and makes it much easier to keep the phone at the same height in every room.

Common mistakes that give away a phone shoot

• The number one tell is leaning walls. Level the phone.
• Avoid shooting from eye height. Holding the phone at 5 feet gives you too much ceiling or floor and too little room.
• Check for a toilet seat left up or crumpled towels. Put the seat down. Fold towels once and hang them straight.
• Check the frame for your reflection. Look in mirrors, microwaves, oven doors and glass shower screens. Shoot mirrors from an angle so you aren't in them.
• Turn off ceiling fans. Spinning blades blur.
• Don't leave counters covered. Remove soap and sponges, fridge magnets, the toaster and the knife block. Clear everything that isn't decor.
• Avoid pinch zoom. Zooming between the lens buttons digitally crops the image and throws away detail. Tap 0.5x or 1x and move your feet instead.
• Watch for vertical photos. They're still common in agent-shot MLS listings. Keep the phone horizontal.

Use our real estate photo shot list to decide which rooms to shoot and in what order.

Where editing fits

Even a carefully shot iPhone photo usually needs a little editing. Bulbs leave a yellow cast. A window burns out, or a wall leans a degree or two. You can fix all of that by hand in Lightroom or the iPhone Photos app. Once you know what you're doing, it takes a few minutes per photo, which adds up across a 30-photo listing.

Real Estate Camera does that work for you. Shoot in the app or upload photos you've already taken. Enhance corrects light and color, then straightens verticals, in 20 to 60 seconds for 1 credit. It won't declutter or move walls. And it won't swap a gray sky for a blue one, so the photo still shows the house a buyer will see.

For an empty room, virtual staging adds furniture in one of eight styles and labels the file "virtually staged". Check your board's rules first in our guide to virtual staging and MLS rules. If the seller's furniture is the problem, removing furniture from photos covers the options.

A quick routine for each room

1. Lights on, blinds open, fan off, clutter out.
2. Stand in the corner opposite the best wall.
3. Hold the phone horizontally at light-switch height. Select 0.5x.
4. Line up the level.
5. Tap a wall and adjust exposure until the room looks right. Hold for AE/AF Lock.
6. Check the frame edges for stretched furniture. Look for your reflection too.
7. Shoot two frames. Move on.

The first house will feel slow. By the third listing, you stop thinking about the steps and just walk the rooms.