Note to sellers

[b86fiero]

Hello Everyone,

Thanks to all of you who provides bright, crisp photos with their listings. 

I spent hours Monday searching for vintage / antique Fenton glass to replace pieces damaged when a large tree branch barrelled through a window and ran smack into my MIL's china cabinet.

I did find a few items which are in my shopping cart right now.  Other Fenton rose bowls, vases and vaseline glass.  Will I purchase them?  Can't say for sure because I can't really see what I would be buying.

I purchased item 232681486885 which was a listing for 3 Fenton Rose Bowls in yellow over white.  I took a chance as the photos are very dark.

Dark photos were commonplace in vintage glass search results I saw.  There were several other items I might have purchased but the photos were either so dark I could not see the item, there were many other extraneous items in the photo including one wrinkled hand and arm holding the item which prevented a clear view of the item for sale, had wild background prints making it hard to see the item or had blurry photos.  I was surprised how many did not include the item size in the description.

I know you folks provide great photos so buyers can see clearly what they will be getting.  

I had intended to purchase the replacement items here on eBay but if I'm going to spend several hundred dollars I need to see what my MIL will receive.   

Best wishes,

BJ 

[gkyn29]

Nice post.

I try hard with my Blackberry Classic so in absence of good equipment and perfect quality, I will sometimes compensate with additional pics/angles.

[castlemagicmemories]

If you care to, you can message the seller and ask for more pictures, diplomatically stating that you are sorry but the pictures are too dark to be able to discern the item properly.

That may or may not work.  It could just get you on their BBL.  

If you ask about damage you think you see in pictures, you could just be told that the item is fine, then it arrives with the damage you questioned.

I don't want to discourage you but these are all in the realm of my experience.  You are covered with the MBG.  Your call, good luck!

It's very kind of you to try to replace your MIL's broken items and this is the place to do that.

[juststuffisell]

I will say that lighting is one of the hardest things to get right. When I built my building I though I had way more lighting than I needed.. double what the guy doing the wiring said I needed for the size of the space - which was my intent...nope.....still come out dark. $399.00 new camera - nope....can't get all the colors (But at least have some control over the lighting). I loath spending more money on another new camera and additional photo lighting & larger light filtering but at some point, if I am going to continue selling online, I am going to have to drop the cash....and a lot of sellers who swing this part time just can't afford that.

Best thing to do is to ask for more pictures as castlemagic suggests. Even then, some colors just don't show well with an iphone or digital camera set-up even out doors.

[waterbed_bigfoot]

@juststuffisellWe had an old olympus camera took great bright pictures but it ran on AA batteries and we went through a lot so I bought a hard for me to use camera a canon powershot S70 because you can set up a custom shot and adjust the white balance.  Boy is that a learning curve.  I built a white box out of foam board I got from the dollar store and my pictures get better all the time.  I find if they are not bright enough eBays little filter to enhance works pretty good.  I crop them and enhanse them in the windows 10 photo editor.  Our old ones were real dark and I've been going through and taking new photos as I go.  So I wasn't out much money I paid about 60.00 for the camera on eBay and 2 new battery packs.  I had to get an sd card too.  So far so good and all was less than 75.00.  

[gew6463]

Good suggestion with asking for additional pictures (though we really shouldn't need to purely for a 'basic' look, right? I know, preaching to the choir here 😉 ).  I never thought of someone blocking me for it. So far, everyone has been very helpful when I make this request, and often they don't even realize their pictures are of such poor quality. Many seem to like the idea of a potential sale enough to be obliging (I make a point of only asking on auctions that I plan to buy if the pictures match stated condition & quality).

I thought that Ebay had raised the rules on quality of photos required? I was searching yesterday (with my buyer's hat on) and found several auctions with pictures that were so washed out by camera flash that I wasn't exactly sure what I was looking at..?? Kind of funny, but also kind of sad. It's too much work to list only to have buyers walk away because your pictures are so poor. 

[gew6463]

This made me laugh..:) I was having the same issue, and solved it by using a white foam packing sheet used for packing printers (hubby's job) and it does a better job than any of my other backgrounds! Another competitor claimed I was copying their background, so I asked them "so you use a white piece of foam for your background as well?" ..strange..they haven't gotten back to me on that and it has been months..lol. 

I guess great minds think alike 😉

[irinahat]

I use a white foam board and take photos with a Sony Cyber Shot camera. Then, I upload the photos to my computer and use Corel Paint Shop Pro to edit in some brightness / contrast. I live in a very shady area near the woods surrounded by trees and I don't have a lot of good natural sunlight flooding through my windows due to the tall old trees around my house. I don't want to bother setting up a light set up, but, editing in the lighting does WONDERS for photos.

[b86fiero]

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies.

The Fenton yellow over white rose bowls arrived via Priority mail and they are beautiful.  I have to think that if the listing photos were brighter another buyer would have snatched them up immediately and I would have missed them.  My MIL will be thrilled!

I just paid for another piece of Fenton after the seller got back to me with the measurements.  The photos were clear but the measurements missing from the description held up the sale for a couple of days waiting to hear back from the seller.

For what it's worth, my listing photos are not perfect and I work at improving with every new listing.  I purchased a roughly 18x18x18" pop up photo cube on eBay several years ago.  Cost about $22.  Works okay for small items.  Came with four interchangeable solid color background panels.  It is not lighted but works fine on sunny days or in bright indirect light.  I purchased a professional 30x26x26" light box that is fabulous, heavy but fabulous.  Has two inside lights, one centered and one off to the left for contrast.  It collapses for portability and came with several color background panels.  Paid about $140.  Too heavy for me to be picking it up all the time so it's permanently sitting on a 3x8 foot table in my workroom.

Love the ideas for using white foam board or box inserts as photo cubes!!

My Canon Powershot camera has it's own software for editing photos.  Especially like the ability to increase the exposure light and the sharpen / clarity option. 

Although I crop and edit my photos using the Canon software I often use the editing tools on the eBay listing page to further tweak if necessary.   

Now, off to politely ask for brighter photos from sellers for other items sitting in my shopping cart.  I really have to wonder how many items go unsold due to dark or chaotic background photos.      

[27flamingolane]

Good advice for any seller.   Thank you for posting this!  I am sorry you had such an unfortunate experience.   There is simply no excuse for dark, blurry photos if you want to provide the best information upon which a buyer can base a purchase decision.  I am in constant amazment when I do pricing research as to the lack of quality in photos...not just in collectiles, but clothing as well.  If I can't see what I'm buying, I will just hit the back button.  Again, as a seller, I am so sorry you are having such a hard time because of poor quality photos.  I hope you are able to replace all of your MIL's pieces and that they are what you hoped they would be.  Good luck!

[vevintage]

Man, I am totally with you on this. Bad pictures seem to be at epidemic levels, on ebay and elsewhere. I used to believe that over the years, as digital cameras got better and cheaper and more and more people became familiar with digital tech, peoples' listing photos would improve. HAH! Joke's on me, I swear they seem to be worse. 

[irinahat]

I'd also like to chime in about the fact that I think excellent photos can really boost your sales.

I see the forums full of many threads about sellers having low / no sales. Sure, sometimes I check out people's items and I notice that they don't have a lot of items listed, perhaps they are selling in a niche category, or an overly saturated clothing, have high prices, etc.

But a lot of times, I notice that people have very dark photos! Photos that are just very dark, blurry, and not catching people's eye as they scroll through the page.

I do use an editing software to edit brightness / contrast back into my photos and I've been doing this for over 10 years now. Back in my newbie Ebay selling days, I too had dark and awful photos. Never again.

My photos aren't perfect. My camera isn't perfect. I'd love to afford an incredible camera someday that'd give me out of this world mind-blowing detailed photos, but, I've been using the same Sony Cybershot camera for years now.

People don't realize just how much their sales would improve if the quality of photos improved as well.