Shoot Photos for Success on eBay
Great Pictures Make Auction Items Stand Out for Profitable Sales.
Improve your success on eBay - make your items stand out by shooting good clear photographs so bidders can see what they're bidding on.
The key to good product shots is lighting, composition, and focus on the essentials. It’s nice if the photograph is sharp, too! Most people take photos of people and scenery, so macro photography of small objects is a new world to them. Many photographs on ebay are murky and don’t show the auction products at their best. Here are some tips to take good macro shots with typical consumer digicams.
Shooting Close-Up (macro photography)
Most digital cameras can focus on objects a few inches from the lens. Look for a close-up button or menu setting, usually indicated with a flower. Set your camera halfway between the wide-angle and zoomed in position. Focus on a coin and look at how close you can go with the close-up setting compared to normal. With the macro setting you can get in closer, filling the screen with more of your object without having to zoom in. That means your camera will have more light to work with and your photo will be sharper (with the lens zoomed right in less light gets to the camera so the shutter is open longer, and the extra magnification amplifies minor hand trembling loosing picture sharpness).
Lights!
On-camera flash is the worst kind of light you can use, so turn it off. Put your object on a table in front of you, with a big window illuminated by daylight behind you, with the light coming over your right shoulder. This sort of soft lighting works a charm for many small objects. If the left-hand side of your object is in too much shadow, bring up a piece of white paper or a white box on the left to reflect some of the light from the window back into the shadows.
Some objects like crystals and glass looks better with a harder light from a small source like a desk lamp – in that case wait for darkness and shoot with the light coming just from the lamp, experiment with the angle to get the sparkle right, You may need to change the white balance on the camera to compensate for artificial light. A white piece of paper held just out of view on the other side of the object from the light can help soften the shadows cast by this sort of lighting.
Composition
You want your viewers to look at your object, not at your taste in wallpaper, books or carpets. So find a way to make your object stand apart from the background. Lift it up a little bit from the table, and keep the background some distance away. Don’t shoot it from above, resting on the carpet or the table – we wouldn’t normally look down at many objects like that, and the background will be just as much in focus as the object you are selling, stealing attention away from the star of the show.
Isolating your object from the background is particularly important for the thumbnail product picture, and here you may want to come in closer to a key feature of what you are selling to make it stand out in such a small photo.
Jewelry and glassware
The techniques described work for everyday objects, but if your are shooting specialised subjects like jewelry, crystals and glassware, it is easier to use lighting aids designed for the task, like those from Tabletop Studio or Lastolite
Using these simple techniques and the digicam you already have will make your auction photos more lifelike so your buyers see your products in a better light. Use a firm support or tripod for the camera for sharp images free of camera shake. Consult your camera's manual to see how to compensate if your photos are overexposed (washed out) or too dark, and if you are using a tripod use a lower ISO like 100 or 200 rather than automatic for the cleanest results
 |
 |
 |
 |
