A catalogue image tells a buyer what the part looks like in general. A photograph of the actual unit tells them what they are buying. For new stock the first is enough; for anything surplus, refurbished or used, the second is the single largest difference between an offer that gets a request and one that does not.
What the buyer is checking
They are not admiring the product. In about four seconds they are looking for:
- Is this the exact article number I need, including the version suffix.
- What condition is it really in — scuffs, corrosion, missing covers.
- Is anything missing — terminal blocks, front connectors, memory cards, mounting clips.
- Does it look like it came from a working machine or out of a skip.
Every shot below exists to answer one of those.
The five shots
1. The rating plate, filling the frame, in focus. This is the most important photograph you will take. The article number, the version, the serial and the date code must be readable at full size. If the plate is small, get closer rather than cropping later.
2. The front, straight on. The whole unit, square to the camera, on a plain background. This is the thumbnail and it is what the buyer scans in a grid of offers.
3. The connector or terminal side. Where the wear is, where things go missing, and where a buyer checks that the terminal blocks are present.
4. Any defect, close up. A scratch, a scuff, a discoloured label. Photographing a flaw does not lose you the sale; discovering it on arrival loses you the customer.
5. What is included, laid out. Unit, front connector, mounting clips, manual, memory card — whatever ships. This single shot prevents most of the "I thought it came with…" disputes.
For a batch of identical new-surplus units, one set for the batch plus a plate shot per unit is usually the right trade-off.
Getting a usable shot in two minutes
A phone from the last five years is entirely adequate. What matters is light and background, not the camera.
- Light: near a window in daylight, or under a diffuse work light. Never the phone's own flash — it blows out the plate, which is the one thing you needed to read.
- Background: a sheet of plain grey or white card, or a clean bench. Not a keyboard, not a pallet, not the floor.
- Steady: brace your elbows on the bench. Most unreadable plate shots are motion blur, not focus.
- Focus: tap the screen on the plate before shooting.
- Angle: square to the face. Perspective distortion makes a buyer wonder what you are hiding.
- Fill the frame. Crop in the camera by getting closer, not afterwards.
Technical requirements
- Minimum 1200 px on the long edge. Larger is fine; we resize.
- JPEG or WebP, under 10 MB.
- Landscape or square for the primary image — it fits the card grid without cropping the subject.
- No watermarks over the part. A discreet logo in a corner is fine; a watermark across the rating plate makes the photograph useless for the one job it has.
- No stock photos presented as the unit. If it is a catalogue image, mark it as one. Buyers forgive a catalogue image; they do not forgive a photograph of a different unit.
Alt text
Every photograph should carry one short sentence describing it: "Siemens 6ES7315-2EH14-0AB0 rating plate" is better than "image1.jpg". It is what a screen-reader user hears, and it is what a search engine indexes. Thirty seconds per listing, and it is one of the few pieces of listing work that pays back on both accessibility and discovery.
What not to do
- Photographing the box instead of the part.
- One photograph taken at arm's length showing six units on a shelf.
- Heavy filters or "enhanced" colour. A buyer comparing your photograph to the unit on arrival should not see a different colour.
- Hiding the damage, then arguing about it. The dispute costs more than the discount would have.