Are SmartPhones Good Enough For Real Estate Photography Yet?

All the time I get requests to write a list of tips for real estate agents for taking better photos with their SmartPhones. A good photographer with good technique can make a beautiful photo regardless of the camera/gear but interior photography has a couple of unique challenges that SmartPhones still have trouble with:

1. Wide-angle shots are problematic: Notice I didn’t say impossible. I know, there are clip on wide-angle lenses but these are all pretty bad quality (like the old screw-on wide-angle adapters for point and shoots) compared to an inexpensive wide-angle zoom you can get for a DSLR. Of course this problem goes away if you get a SLR lens mount for your SmartPhone but I don’t know what you do if you want to use a tripod.
2. Triggering lights is a bit of a problem: Sure you can shoot brackets all right but I would argue that for acceptable quality with even with bracketed images you need at least one flash. I can’t get my iPhone’s built-in LED light to trigger any of my optical slave flashes. There’s a KickStarter project for someone.