|
I am Gene Wright in Stockton California. I am not the Gene Wright
Photographer, a
longtime studio and commercial photographer in North Beach who was
dubbed a "living legend" by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.
Click here to find the San Francisco Gene Wright or here for the
book San Francisco Love Affair: A Photographic Romance - Gene Wright Images 1949-2000
My name is Gene Wright.
I am a real estate broker that became interested in computers and photography
as a direct need for quality real estate photography in the real estate business. See
my page on: Room too Dark
and the Panorama Tour Page.
The average real estate agents are still using camera phones to photograph their
listings and very rarely do I see a MLS listing interior shot with a 10mm or
12mm wide lens .
I started my first website to have a place to promote my real estate business
and have a place for the real estate photos
I only shot film with my Minolta SLR SRT101 prior to the website. I started the
website in October of
2000 with
 a brand new Sony Cybershot DSC-P1. 3,3 MP camera. This camera
measures 4.5 x 2.1 x 1.7 (fits in my pocket) and weighs 8.8 ounces.
I paid $799 for it, It came with an 8MB memory stick. The only Nikon DSLR
at the time was the Nikon D1 2,7 MP DX which sold for a whopping $5,000. Nikon
did not release an affordable prosumer DSLR, until The
Nikon D70 in February of
2004 for $999, and the NIKON D50 in April of 2006 including the
Nikkor 18-55 kit
lens and the Nikkor 55-200 for $650. and the
current Nikon D40 was first released in November of 2005 for $599. In June of
2006, I got the D50 because I wanted a wider lens to shoot interior photos. The only wide
choices were the Nikkor 12-24mm ($950) and the
Sigma 10-20mm for which I paid a huge $520,
it was cheaper and wider than the Nikkor 12-24mm. The Sigma is an
excellent lens, just a little slow in low light (which is the majority of
residential interiors) at
f/4. Two things with this lens: it is so big around (3.3 inches), it casts such a
gigantic shadow at the bottom of the photo with the on-camera flash. I have to
use an external flash to eliminate the shadow, (besides when I bounce the light off the ceiling, I get
better photos). If I were buying a new 10-something lens today, I'd take a hard
look at the new
Nikkor 10-24mm Lens.
The Sony lens was 3x optical (39 - 117mm as 35mm equiv.) F2.8 - F5.3.
The Sigma 10-20mm lens was (15-30mm as 35mm equiv). Now we could finally shoot some
decent interior photos. When Sigma released the f/4 fisheye lens in 2006,
I got all excided about doing 360 Virtual Real Estate Photography, and I
started a website just for the real estate virtual tours. We named it VistaView360.com.
The virtual tours are still here, but they have taken somewhat of a back seat to
all the other exciting photography activities.
So about the website
As time
went along, more and more acquaintances, friends and customers kept asking about
the camera gear I use, what camera equipment should they get. How to shoot real estate
photography. etc. Where to get prosumer camera equipment without paying an
arm and a leg. It seemed like they had a thousand questions. So I put up some pages
they could go to about where to Best Prices for the various equipment I talked about and
used.
At the time Stockton had two independent camera stores (I could swear that
each store charged at least $125% of MSRP for everything in their stores). When
Best Buy came into town, one camera store went out of business, the smaller
store was purchased by Wolf Camera (a part of Ritz Camera). Every time I have
gone to Best Buy, if the camera product is not on the top 50 list, they don't have it in stock.
The same story for our local Wolf Camera (I know you can order on-line from
either company), but if you're going on-line why not order from one of the big
three
Adorama,
Amazon or
B&H Photo Video, where
you can get it at a big discount,
besides if they don't have it in stock, it probably doesn't exist.
As people discovered the website,
more questions came in. So, in my spare time, the site has grown from a half
dozen pages to a combined total of over 5,600 pages on
Vistaview360.com (this site) and
wrightrealtors.com. I have touched on
almost all 35mm camera manufactures and all of their cameras and all their
lenses. There are more reviews coming (when I get time) When you buy camera
equipment, please link to one of these companies through this site:
Adorama,
Amazon or
B&H Photo Video,
(This will ultimately give me more time to do more reviews) I get a small
referral fee from them and besides you still pay much less than at your hometown
camera store. I personally order from these companies and you can trust them.
Digital Cameras and all other
electronics are like dog years.
Multiply the camera age by 7. So by September of 2008 the D50 was already
effectively 21
years old. Besides new cameras like the
Nikon D90,
Nikon D3000, and
D5000 have been released. What can I say?, I like new
toys. But, let me say again: You don't need new or fancy equipment to shoot good
photos. See my page on
How to improve photography without new gear
 About The Photography
History. When
I was a just little kid, my parents had a Kodak
Box Camera that I took many wonderful pictures with. It was a No 2A
Brownie Model C made in Rochester New York by Eastman Kodak, first introduced in
1924. It sold new for $3.75 and used roll film.
In 1962, I purchased a Polaroid Land camera. Can't remember the exact price, but
it was expensive (around a $100)
In 1972, we acquired a pocket size Kodak instamatic that used a new KODAK
110 Film Cartridge. The line was so popular that more than 25 million cameras
were produced in slightly under three years. In 1976, I purchased a OneStep SX-70 camera,
the Pronto!.Over 6 million Land cameras were produced that year. This camera was
fantastic for real estate photography (at the time). Looking back, this camera
sucked.
In 1977, I purchased my First SLR, a Minolta SRT101, a 28mm wide angle lens and
a 500mm telephoto lens. I made lots of shots with this camera,
film development process was slow and somewhat expensive. Great camera though,
beautiful images, but as computers and the internet was developing I wanted to
transfer images direct to my computer and my internet website.
In October, 2001, I acquired the digital Sony DSC-P1 3.3 Megapixel camera with a 3x
optical zoom for a whopping price of $799. I purchased because it was small and
fit in my pocket. There was nothing like it. You could
use a USB cable to transfer the digital images straight to your computer. I shot
thousands of photos with this camera. It is sitting in the closet to this day
usurped by a 6mm DSLR camera with wide angle lenses.
Prior to this camera I was using the Polaroid One Step and copying the photos
with a scanner or just making copies on the copy machine for real estate flyers,
or making copies of photos developed from the Minolta SLR.
I Sold the Polaroid at a garage sale after acquiring this camera.
I really missed the SLR concept but wanted an SLR in digital format and when Nikon came out with the D70 for $999 in
2004, I drooled over this camera until 2005 when Nikon released the 6mp D50, I
opted for the D50. It was priced at $650, but Costco had it on sale for $750
including a 18-55mm and a 55-200 lens. I still use this camera daily. It has
over 25,000 shots and is still going strong. I normally shoot jpeg at 3,008 x 2,000, which
makes good 8x10 prints at 300dpi. For the website, I reduce the size to 800x500
at 70% quality and normally lead the photos with a 200x130 thumbnail image. This
is painfully slow for dial-up, but a breeze for DSL and Cable Users.
I wanted wider shots for real estate interiors and the later part of 2007
purchased a Sigma 10-20mm for those really wide interior shots. I looked hard at
the Nikon 18-200 "Super Zoom", but when Sigma came out with an optical
stabilized 18-200
OC HSM lens for $200 less than the Nikon, I purchased at the
same time as the 10-20. The 18-200 hardly ever leaves the camera and the OS is
good for about 3-4 stops.
I became interested in panorama tours and acquired a
Nikon 10mm fisheye and a
Sigma 8mm fisheye. I sold the Nikon because it took 10 shots as opposed to the
Sigma with only 4 shots required for a stitched panorama tour. See working examples on this site.
Real Estate Tours or
Gallery Tour
There are literally thousands of photos of Stockton, Lodi and San Joaquin County
on this website and my real estate website
WrightRealtors.com I started with a
photo or two per page, but added photo galleries to display more photos.
Some of my favorite cameras and lenses are the 12mp Nikon D90, but I still prefer the "old shoe
Nikon D50" I also favor the Tamron
fast 28-75 f28 which is a terrific walk around lens and the Sigma 18-200 HSM
and the Sigma
"Bigma" 50-500 Lens
How I do lens reviews
I test many of the lenses myself and not just rely
solely on reviews of others. I constantly buy, sell and trade lenses, I borrow them from friends
or rent them for
a few days and then come to my own conclusions about a lens. I also shoot images in similar conditions, look at them on the computer and print them out to compare lenses:
I get my camera gear at
Adorama,
Amazon
or B&H Photo Video
To find out more about VistaView360.com, we invite you to take a look around this site and see some of the services we provide, the sites we've built, and a few things just for fun.
| 
