Yes. You can do real estate and/or architectural – or any type of – photography on an iPhone. Or any modern smartphone from the last 2-3 years. As the old saying goes: »The best camera is the one you have with you.«

So I created this section to show that modern smartphones with its RAW capabilities have gotten pretty powerful in the last years.

Their form factor also makes them invaluable for location scouting, tracking of the sun, taking test shots and acquire GPS readouts.

But please keep in mind that the low megapixel amount, the noise behaviour in low light situations and the limited dynamic range in modern sensors are still posing issues in smartphone photography.

Due to its small size there are physical limitations that (still) cannot be overcome – even by computational photography.

Especially in architectural photography there are major limitations for keystoning (straighten) vertical lines in the images which result in a severe loss of resolution.

Additionally there are some more hurdles: sometimes you need to use strobes/flashes for interior architectural photography. Most modern strobes cannot sync with smartphones (apart from some Profoto strobes).

I did extensive retouching of iPhone ProRAW images for a client recently (see the pictures on this page). Due to the hectic nature of her job and tight schedules as an architect she is not always able to send a professional photographer into her objects.

So we decided to take it into our own hands. I gave her an extensive multi-hour tutorial about the basics of photography, suggested her a certain iPhone model and certain apps and techniques to shoot with.

After a while shot got the hang of it and provided me with good material to work with. I then processed everything in Adobe Photoshop/Lightroom and we were able to churn out some (almost) high end quality images.

Learn more about RAW photography here.

As I described earlier there are limitations in smartphone photography:

• low megapixels
• difficult noise behaviour in low light situations
• limited dynamic range
• physical limitations of that cannot be overcome by computational photography
• sometimes the computational photography actively inhibits an »artistic exposure« due to aggressive HDR treatment by the phone manufacturer

Especially in architectural photography there are major limitations for keystoning (straighten) vertical lines in the images which result in a severe loss of resolution — which is already not that great to begin with.

The lack of most professional strobe manufacturers to support modern smartphones — apart from Profoto — is the reason why you cannot use those strobes to begin with.

The lack of strobes often results in problematic color casting on walls and objects. While this can be sometimes compensated in postproduction it often requires you to spend more hours of work on an image with masking out parts of the image than it would be normally necessary when shot with professional equipment.

While it is absolutely possible to produce (almost) high end images on smartphones these days it should be noted that smart phone photography cannot replace professional photography as of now — and probably for a while.

There is a reason why professional camera equipment is much bigger and more expensive. The laws of physics still apply — and in my opinion always will.

There is this notion about AI (artificial intelligence) and computational photography that it will ultimately replace high end equipment. I guess smartphone manufactures would be happy to make this point.

But in my opinion there are too many limitations at the moment and sometimes the smartphone algorithms are aggressively fighting against your artistic taste because they are based on the taste of someone else working for these companies.

These limitations can be overcome to a certain degree like I described. But the additional effort while shooting and in postproduction should be taken into account.

Finally you will only be able to print those images in low quality. The resolution might be enough for a website or social media platforms. But for higher end publications they are not suited at the moment due to the lack of resolution.

And don’t let yourself be fooled by the marketing campaigns of Apple or Samsung. In the end it makes no difference if they advertise 12 or a 100 Megapixels. The laws of physics apply to all manufacturers. That is why the are investing so much in computational photography.