eBay: It's Photography That Sells
- by Peter Lerman (copyright 2010)
CAMERA!
The photos I use on eBay were taken with my Nikon D300. The body alone, no lens, cost me $1,700. That's a lot of money but it never needs film and I already had a bunch of lenses to use with it. I have been extremely happy with it over the last couple of years. It's what I wanted and needed because I shoot a wide variety of subject matter for many varied uses.
The Nikon shoots photos that are 4,288 pixels wide by 2,848 pixels high. When I do everything right, the photos are gorgeous. However, no matter what I do I will never post a photo on eBay tht is over 1,000 pixels wide by about 800 pixels high. That means I am shooting 12.1 Megapixel photos and using less than One Megapixel in my end product. Could I get the same results with LESS camera? I wanted to prove that I could so I set up a simple test.
I also own a pocket-sized point-and-shoot Panasonic Lumix that I bought at Costco about a year ago for two hundred bucks. I love Costco. The little thing is what I stick into my pocket when my intentions are less than serious. The little guy does take pretty decent snapshots. Can it do what the Nikon does? Well, no and yes.
Here it is, my Dad's little porcelain statue again. I set up the camera on a tripod, lit the statue the way I like it and shot it with both cameras from exactly the same spot. The Nikon was fitted with a Micro-Nikkor 55mm f//2.8 Ai Lens from the 1980's. Fantastic old school, manual focus wonder-lens; so sharp you can barely hold it without gloves. The Panasonic had the little do-everything lens it comes with (yawn).
The Nikon could remotely trigger my strobes via an accessory transmitter I put into the hot shoe. the Panasonic could not trigger an off camera flash so I just shot with the modeling light that the strobe has built into it (a 250w quartz bulb).
The Nikon produced a 12.1MP, 16-bit color depth amazing image. the Panasonic, a much less amazing 8-bit JPEG. There is a huge difference between the two but it doesn't MAKE a difference. I could use either one to handsomely display the goods on eBay. The shot above on the left is from the Nikon, on the right from the Panasonic.
Here's that shot of the camera done with the Nikon (left) and the Panasonic (right). Again, they are not the same; the Nikon is far and away much better when you view the original files from the cameras. Again, they are equally good for the purposes of selling stuff on eBay. The subtle differences are inconsequential for this use.
So what do you need to get your job done? I will tell you.
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