eBay: It's Photography That Sells
- by Peter Lerman (copyright 2010)
CAMERA! (continued)
How much camera do you NEED in order to get excellent photos for eBay? Lighting and camera technique are so much more important than a highly sophisticated camera. There are certain features that a camera must have and everything it has above that are extra added treats.
If you get yourself a digital single lens reflex, a DSLR, you are in business. You can change lenses and get one that has close (macro) focusing. You can get it to trigger an off-camera flash. You can impress the gang at the the camera club and the family at the barbecue.
It will allow full manual control so you can set the f/ stop and shutter speed. It will probably have automatic white balance (AWB) so it will know if you are shooting strobe or daylight or tungsten and adjust the color accordingly.
It will likely have a pop-up flash but by now you know better than to actually pop it up and use it, right? The digital Rebel shown here is several years old and would do a great job. It's a 6 Megapixel camera which, as I have shown you, it 5MP more than you are going to use for eBay. You can get one of these cheap from some guy whose kids bought him one for Father's Day 2005 but he never figured out how to charge the battery. His loss is your gain. Get a lightly used one with a fine lens very cheap.
If you have the dough to buy this year's latest and greatest camera, I promise you that any DSLR you leave the store with will do a good job if you do your work properly. They are all reviewed extensively on KenRockwell.com (high-end equipment), DPReview.com (very technical and exhaustive) and on CNET.com (for everybody else). Take your pick.
You can also find all the features you need in most point and shoot cameras that cost over $200 new or about $100 or less used.
[You could have bought this old Olympus from me on eBay for under $40. Just close that pop-up flash and you are ready to go.]
You NEED to be able to turn off the built-in flash. You NEED close focusing (to about 12 inches). You NEED over- and under-exposure adjustment. More than that, you might like but you can live without.
The ability to shoot "RAW" files is good but not necessary. Some cameras offer the ability to shoot as close and an inch or so from the lens. Also nice to have but rarely necessary. You don't care about shutter lag or burst rate (look them up, or not).
Lenses? My preference is the short telephoto. I mostly use the 55mm on the Nikon D300 which is the equivalent of about an 80mm lens on a 35mm camera. It's a good working distance for most of my subjects. A wide angle lens may include the left and right sides of the backdrop in the background and it requires you to be too close to your subject.
If you get the zoom 'kit' lens with your DSLR it will probably focus close enough. I would recommend using the medium focal length the lens can be set to; anywhere between 40mm and 60mm.
Try to shoot in a mode that allows you to control the aperture. You want to be stopped down to f/11 or smaller for good depth of field ("smaller" is f/16 or f/22). If your flash is not powerful enough to get good exposures at these f/ stops increase the ISO speed (sensitivity) of the camera's sensor to ISO 400 or 800 (no higher).
With the point-and-shoot cameras you will notice that they are usually at their widest angle setting by default when you turn them on. This is too wide an angle of view. Zoom to the middle of the zoom range and adjust object size by moving in and out with your camera.
Learn to use the over and under exposure compensation feature in your camera to help you deal with automatic exposures of particularly light or dark subjects.
PLEASE remember to re-read you camera's manual and remember to experiment. Experimenting and playing around are nearly free since you are shooting digital, not film. Take advantage of that to explore your camera's other options and setting.
You are going to need some image processing software, too.
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