Photographs of metal items look rusty

I know you'll hate me for suggesting this, but -- how about cleaning the rust off?

LLoyd

Not directly related to color correction is a cheap trick to produce "bounce lighting" with the camera's flash. Take a piece of tinfoil and tape it just under the flash "bulb" on the camera. Then bend the foil so it acts as a reflector to direct the light up to the ceiling. This causes the flash to bounce off of the ceiling and down onto the subject, thereby producing more natural-looking lighting and reducing glare off of shiny objects. If you don't have a ceiling to bounce the light off of you can set up a white card above your subject to reflect the light back down onto it. Because ceilings (or white paper cards) usually have a flat finish they tend to diffuse the light and soften shadows somewhat as well.

Thanks. I will try to replicate it using a bed sheet and some existing frame or some such.

Along with the other suggestions try changing the white balance. I have a Pentax camera and was able to get better pictures by setting the white balance manually. But don't ask me what to set your white balance with. I just used various backgrounds in my shop until the pictures looked correct with the shop lighting. The manual says to point the camera at a white sheet of paper to set the white balance but I ended up using a light grey wall to get the pictures to look right. ERS

That's a great idea! I'll add another skylight.

Yes, that is great for small items. This doesn't work to well for rack mounted equipment or palletized items that need to be rolled in with a pallet jack or forklift. Using diffused halogens that are cheap allow you to make a custom softbox the size of a room. Once he gets his shooting booth set up the way he likes it he can then get down to basics and set up custom curves and white balance if his camera supports it.

Rita

Too complicated. Use white fluorescent light diffuser panels.

Rita

Don, you might consider fixing the typo in the first sentence of your page.

"I've gathered together most or our surplus... "

Actually, I ADDED rust to this particular item!

It turned out that the wall behind the photo was brown and reflected in the top of the ultra shiny stainless rear ring. The bottom reflected blue-steel and the transition looked ungainly and awful.

So the top "rust" was drug down into its own bottom.

For an example of where bunches of rust were really removed, see

In this case, fifteen of the sixteen items were still sealed in original mil packaging and are presumed mint. The open one was rusted pretty badly on its exterior.

Cosmetics are not usually a pressing issue on this particular item. Either it works or it does not. And it is much easier to clean the image rather than the item. No point is cleaning anything till it is sold.

This image did perhaps did wander a little too far off into the caricature realm.

But somebody did just air overnight one of these at FIVE times shipping costs. Haven't heard back for two weeks, so I presume they are happy.

The collectible market does not appear either well established or mainstream on this item.

It is much easier to clean the rust off the photo than the object.

No point in spending time and effort on anything until it is sold.

All of your most ors are belong to us.

Very impressive edits. I will explore various scripting solutions here. I have a "derust" script already, to use imagemagick.

Yes, Nikons are only good for hammering rust.

Nick

It's totally and utterly foolish to take less than two hour in postproduction time per item. If your script does it any faster you are violating all rules of common sense for eBay pics.

Rita

By jove, I think she has finally got it!

Spending proper time in picture post proc can easily TRIPLE your eBay return. Especially on multiple and higher priced items.

Of course, no buyer will complain that the item condition doesn't match the photo...

Ayup! Canon rules! (ducking and running).

Try this Iggy

I will try to build something like that...

your photography lessons start at your house? I'm starting mine next month ;-)

Tina

Since the condition of what we ship nearly always EXCEEDS that of the photo, you are normally correct.

But we did get negged once for shipping an improved, later, better performing model of a Tektronix plugin. One that even Tek retained the same part number on.

Photos tend to emphasize defects and add artifacts. Most of photo enhancement should consist of removing emphasis and artifacts.

Typically, most of our postprep is involved with distortion correction, shadow removal, lettering enhancement, and background clarification.

for many examples of our eBay photos.

Plain and simple, we have the finest photos and images on eBay, bar none. They consistently pay for themselves many times over.