Easy ways to take more professional looking Ebay photos

This Instructable is to tell everyone a few of the tips I have learned over the years to take professional looking pictures. I use these pictures mostly for Ebay or anything that I want to look nice. These tips are both easy to do and very cheap.

Now, keep in mind a good quality camera is the first step in taking good pictures. But these tips should help make the pictures taken with cheaper cameras look much better too.

By the way, this is a picture for a future Ebay auction of mine. It is the special color variant statue of the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. I chose to feature these pictures because the statue if kind of hard to take pictures of. It is kind of shiny and has many details that need to be shown to make a good auction photo.

Step 1 Tip 1 - The background

There is a very easy and cheap solution to a great looking matte white backdrop. Can you tell what I use for this?

Plain white poster board that you can buy in any store. Surprised? So was I when I tried it.

Just to prove it to the naysayers out there, I took a few step back from my item to show you my setup. And yes, I know my room is kind of messy.

Comments

[jtobako]

You forgot back lighting to remove the shadow.

[skittlespider]

Well, I set up some back lighting. For some reason the pictures turned out looking yellow. Any clue how to fix that? (Besides Photoshop)

[jtobako]

Your camera is trying to average out the color. In other words, it's too bright for your settings. You can mess with the camera settings (something like the bright sun setting) or you can tone down/diffuse your lighting for weaker shadows or try changing the contrast on the image.

[killersquirel11]

Two easy ways that might fix the problem

1.  Have the camera focus/calibrate on the backdrop (half-pressing the button or whatever)

2.  There's generally a manual white balance setting where it has you point it at something that's white and it will calibrate.

[skittlespider]

I know, and I mentioned that. I'll try this idea with some back lighting and see how it works. If it turns out significantly better, I will add a step to show the difference.

[jtobako]

The problem is that someone (like me) is going to scan your photos and see if they look 'professional' (like you put in the title). No mater what you write, if the photos don't match the title, you won't get a good response.

[frollard]

Thats exactly what I was gonna bring up - filtered side/backlighting makes a huge difference.

[rimar2000]

Interesting, thanks.

[skittlespider]

Your welcome

[Decepticon]

Cool Allspark!

[skittlespider]

Yeah, I love it!