I’m looking for ways to improve the efficiency and quality of the photo-uploading side of eBaying at the moment. I’m currently using a small light box and my phone, though the main areas I’m looking to optimise are: 1. occasional glare or reflection issues on soft sleeves or PSA slabs, and 2. uploading the photos more efficiently to eBay.
What I’m doing at the moment just feels so clunky and out-dated: taking the photos, emailing them from my phone to myself and then opening the email on my laptop to download them. Could dropbox be a better option, i.e. drop in via phone, open up via laptop? (Because of my eBay description set up I kinda need to post auctions from my laptop, I find the whole process - apart from the photos - much quicker on a computer than my phone).
In terms of the photo quality and anti-glare/reflections, I’ve considered buying high-lumens white light bulbs for my office room in case that might be a better solution than a cheap little lightbox - not sure if anyone has any experience with that? Have also considered stand-alone photography lights, but it’d be great to get a flavour for what you guys have good experiences with before I go spending more money!
I use Dropbox to store photos until I have time to list, as my work and daily interaction is from multiple devices.
Also if you’re going to buy any extras, I would just get a used scanner off eBay. Look at the Epson v37. With the right settings it will make see one quality images. And as a buyer I’m much more likely to buy a card that has a nice scan of the front and back, over one someone took with a cell phone no matter the quality.
Scanner would be a great idea
Even a cheap printer/scanner combo would do the job (lower quality than a decent scanner) you can set it to save scans directly to your Dropbox/GoogleDrive sync folder so you can access them from either PC or Mobile whenever needed.
Great idea thanks, think I have a printer/scanner combo somewhere in the house, might do a test run with that after work and see how it fares. Graded slabs aren’t as much of a problem cos the quality of the card is already guaranteed for the buyer, it’s just those damn ultra-reflective and dust-attracting psa cases can make the photo-taking that much more frustrating.
I bought a used tripod and adapter for a phone and set it up in the window on a sunny day.
Then use an app to sync the photo folder on my phone to my pc.
Set the tripod up to continually switch cards into the frame. snap front & back. then when done one press sends the images to the pc.
Have that folder shortcut on the desktop. drag and drop the images into the listing.
piece of cake and the images look natural over a scanner and would actually be faster although i dont doubt scanning is a good option too.
app: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sentaroh.android.SMBSync2&hl=en_UStripod phone mount: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072KNBV21/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Most printer scanner combo’s will struggle with the focus of a card inside a PSA case to be honest. I have found that the card is slightly blurry while the front of the PSA case is where the focus is. However for raw cards it should be fine.
My Instagram set up is also my eBay set up now. I really hate working with a light box so decided to put something else together instead:
Pick up a light box which has detachable LED strips;
Pick up a small and inexpensive four-legged table with joining bars;
Turn the table over and attach the LED strips to the joining bars so that the underside of the table is lit up.
With this you now have a somewhat unique picture-taking surface and no longer have to faff around with setting up a light box every time you want to take photos.
Please ignore the mess, I’ve recently moved house and this is in the I don’t know what to do with this stuff room.
Even with a light box I used to always find myself applying various touch ups to photos I’d taken when putting them on Instagram, but since making this I’m not crazy it’s just an upside down table with LED strips contraption I’ve been able to take some really nice pictures without having to put any effort into them. I’m really happy with how this recent post of mine came out.
@pichufan nice bit of creative engineering! Looks like you get some nice shots with that, thanks for sharing - if I can get some decent traction with the scanning I’ll probably end up going that way, but that’d be a nice option for larger products like booster boxes too.
@thevenusaurgarden , I use an old iphone 5s, a white playmat and as much natural light as is available on the day. When taking photos I do make an effort to do so in a position that minimizes glare. Spent £57 on the whole thing and over 3 years, never had any complaints or requests for better quality photos from customers.
In the end, I think a consistent background or description is more important as buyers will immediately identify your listings based on those things. As a collector, if I am buying a card, as long as the photos are decent enough for me to ascertain condition and whether there is damage to the case, I don’t care about studio quality photos.
Also, you mentioned emailing the photos to yourself, which sounds like quite a pain. Good old USB cable to transfer them to a folder on your desktop should be easy and quick enough.
Like others have mentioned I would look into getting a used flatbed scanner off of ebay. If you use it with your laptop you can add the scans directly to eBay from your computer without having to download anything. Duel function printer/scanners really don’t work for slabs since the scan of the back always comes out blurry due to the 3 dimensional aspect of the case. I personally bought a used Epson V300 Scanner for under $100 and have been very impressed with the scan quality for the price.
You will all be happy to know that today I have transcended beyond the upside-down table.
I bought a shelving unit from Amazon to tidy up all the crap you could see in the previous photos. It arrived this morning and whilst putting it together I realised that its depth was a very similar length to the LED strips attached to my trusty upside-down table.
Fumbling over the junk, I reached out for the LED strips and with a firm grip I tore them from their previous fitting.
Wait… This is getting weird.
Anyway, by a complete stroke of luck the plastic fittings on the LED strips are at exactly the perfect position for me to just clip them onto the support beams of the shelving unit without needing any other string or adhesive, so lo and behold, my make-shift light box is now a shelving unit:
I can now take pictures of much larger items without getting any light reflection on the item’s surface, you just get to see the reflection of my pretty fingers instead:
Thank you all for sharing this adventure with me, who knows where my LED strips will end up next!
@pichufan Niiiiice. I’m gonna have to grab another table from IKEA & get something like this set up myself. I could see you expanding this into a rig above the table to hold the camera, a bluetooth remote shutter button and an app/software that sends the photos straight to dropbox/Gdrive…oh and an external monitor to check photo quality too… mmm yes I think you should do that and post results
I once asked a photography forum: is there some sort of camera rig that I can buy that would allow me to position my camera straight down to get perfect macro shots of a flat item (such as a Pokemon card)?
The first response: You mean, like a scanner?
And so I bought a V550 for $150. It takes great pictures
My first picture-taking rig consisted of the following: A6000, lens, batteries, flash, flash stand, tripod, light reflector, umbrella, and a 3D printed card holder to keep the card perfectly vertical (didn’t realize I could simply change the aperture to increase the depth of field until later lol :/)
The V550 scanner is easier to use, faster to use, the images are much faster to process (lighting is perfect from the get-go, no need to fiddle in Lightroom), it takes up far less space, and was way cheaper. I highly recommend a good scanner for eBay pics!
