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Judging from the flood of questions from eBay users wanting to
know how to take pictures for their auctions, this brand of close-up
photography has to be one of the fastest-growing segments of the macro
universe. Most of the time the solutions are easy, here some tips.
The most common question about auction photography is what
resolution is required for good product close-ups. As your auction pictures are unlikely to be displayed at anything
larger than about 600 x 400 pixels, it's tempting to consider buying a
relatively low-resolution digital camera for eBay close-ups. That's false
economy for a number of reasons:
- If you start with a 3MP or better image, you can crop it mercilessly
and still end up with a good 600 x 400-pixel close-up picture. Indeed,
capturing a larger image means you don't even have to get as close to
your subject as you would with a lower-resolution camera.
- Higher-resolution photos can be edited more easily in Photoshop or
another image editor. Even with my astounding photographic skills, I
usually find it necessary to retouch images a bit (or a lot) before
posting them in auctions.
- Many of the people who have no interest in a
digital camera other than as a tool for grabbing images for eBay soon
discover just how much fun digital photography is. That's when they wish
they'd sprung for a better camera with some extra features that are
suitable for general-purpose photography.
- Find a permanent nook or cranny in your home that you can set up as
a semi-permanent home studio for your close-ups. Family members
constantly, and without warning, approach me with cake pans or candy
molds or other items they want captured right now. A small corner
supplied with a few lights and a plain cloth background can be used
repeatedly with little fuss.
- Be prepared to include some common object in the photo, such as a
ruler, to show the scale of the object. That helps avoid questions from
potential bidders (who may not read the auction description carefully)
who want to know if your two-piece Dia de los Muertos skull candy mold
is two inches or four inches wide.
- Watch those colors. Buyers can be miffed if the item they purchase
isn't quite the color they expected. While there's nothing you can do to
calibrate their monitor to match your own, you can still take care in
setting white balance and color correcting your final image to make it
as accurate as possible.
- Optimize your depth-of-field. Selective focus may be cool
artistically, but when you're shooting a close-up of an item for eBay,
you'll want it to have as much overall sharpness as possible.
- Let your photo tell a story and/or provide as much information as
possible.
- Eliminate extraneous information. Shoot against a
seamless white background, then boosted the brightness of the background
in Photoshop so it dropped out completely, leaving the "floating" image
you see. Because the eBay web pages have a white background, the image
blends cleanly in with its surroundings, so there is no distracting
border.
Macro photography techniques | Close up shooting tips | Accessories | Close up lenses | Macro cameras
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