Real Estate Photography Shot List Generator
A real estate shot list is the room-by-room set of frames a listing needs, in the order a buyer would walk the home. For a standard single-family home that means capturing 30 to 45 frames and delivering about 25. Enter the home's size, rooms, and features below to get a list sized to that property, with frames to capture and deliver for each room and how long you'll be on site. Print it or save it as a PDF. It runs in your browser; nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
1. The home
0 for a studio.
Living, family, dining, great room.
Ask the agent before the shoot.
2. What the property has
3. Add-ons booked for this visit
Shot list
Prep before you start shooting
- Turn on every light and lamp; open all blinds and curtains
- Clear kitchen and bathroom counters down to a few deliberate items
- Make the beds and straighten pillows and throws
- Move cars out of the driveway and off the street in front
- Hoses, trash bins, and pet bowls out of frame; pets corralled
- Close toilet lids; set patio furniture the way someone would use it
From pfretour.com/tools/shot-list. Counts are starting points from our shot list, shoot length, and photo count guides; flex them to the house in front of you.
How is the shot list built?
It follows the room-by-room list in our guide to what belongs on a real estate photography shot list, in the order you'd walk the house: the front exterior first, then the interior front to back, then the backyard. Each room gets the frames that guide calls for. The front gets three angles so the agent has a choice of hero image. Each main living space gets two wides from opposite corners. The kitchen gets a wide and a detail. Every secondary bedroom and bathroom gets one clean wide.
Two numbers come out of that. Frames to capture includes a spare angle on the rooms where the stronger shot is worth choosing, so you're picking in the edit instead of reshooting. Photos to deliver is the set you hand over. For a typical three-bedroom home it lands in the 22 to 27 range that draws the most buyer engagement on the major portals.
How many photos should I deliver for this size of home?
The guide figure under "Photos to deliver" comes from our guide to how many photos a listing needs: about 15 to 25 under 2,000 sq ft, 25 to 35 from 2,000 to 3,000, and 35 to 50 over 4,000. If your list comes in under the range, add detail shots of what makes the home worth the price (a fireplace, built-ins, a renovated bath) rather than a second angle of a hallway. Past roughly 35 photos the returns flatten, so a bigger home is a reason to cover more rooms, not to shoot the same rooms more times.
Check the MLS limit before you shoot. Common caps are 25, 36, or 50 photos. If your set is bigger than the cap, the agent picks which photos go to the MLS and the whole set can still live on the listing's tour page.
Where does the time estimate come from?
From our guide to how long a real estate photo shoot takes: 30 to 45 minutes for a home under 1,500 sq ft, one to one and a half hours for an average home, 1.5 to 2.5 hours from 3,000 to 5,000, and two to three hours or more above that. Add-ons go on top: 15 to 30 minutes for drone, 30 to 60 for a walkthrough video or a 3D scan, and 5 to 10 for a phone-scan floor plan. Twilight isn't counted in the time, because you can't rush the sun: it's a return trip at dusk or a wait on site. See when to offer twilight.
Time on site is the short part of the job. Editing is where the hours go, which is why delivery is quoted in days. If you're pricing your packages around that time, the pricing calculator turns it into a price per shoot.
Frequently asked questions
How many shots should a real estate shot list have?
For a standard single-family home, capture 30 to 45 frames and deliver about 25. A one-bedroom condo might be a tight 15; a large home with grounds can justify 35 to 50. The generator sizes the list to the rooms you enter.
Should I send the shot list to the agent?
Send the prep checklist. A home that's ready when you arrive can cut twenty minutes off the visit, and it keeps you from moving laundry baskets on the clock. The room list is mostly for you, so you never drive away without the primary bathroom.
What order should I shoot in?
The same order the list is in: front exterior, then the interior front to back, then the backyard. Deliver in that order too, with the best front exterior first, because it becomes the listing thumbnail.
Pricing your shoots? Try the real estate photography pricing calculator.
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