Need to buy a camera but im a little lost

[nialater]

Hello everyone im new to this forum and this is my first post. I am looking for a good camera to buy my mother for a late christmas gift. She sells items on ebay and I want to buy a camera for her to help out. The main thing the camera would be used for is to take pictures of jewelry. I want to get her a camera that can take sharp pictures and show detail in the best way possible. I have a 200 dollar limit.

I woud like to be able to connect it to the computer in the eisiest way possible(probably usb port)

I would also buy her a tripod to help stabalize it.

The camera she uses now picks up glare off the jewerly i dont know if there is a feture out there that can help cut down on it or not.

some zoom would be nice i have no idea which kind though.

anyideas or sugestions would be appreciated thanks guys

[mtclimber]

nialater-

To answer your questions more completely, let's first examine e-bay's photo requirements.

(1) the photos have to be reduced to 480 X 640 pixel size. This has to be done on a computer.

(2) I am no expert but I have bought and sold many things on e-bay. Thus, I have taken my share of photos for items I am selling. When you are photographing jewelry, if a flash is used to light the photo, you are bound to get some glare back from the jewelry. I woulf think that the ideal lighting would be natural lighting. Work on a table adjacent to a window where you will have soft, filtered, natural light. By using natural light you have no glare problems and no glare problem either.

(3)A sharp well focused and well lighted photo is the key to selling your item quickly. I use a short napped towel that is a neutral rose color on which to photograph my small items.

(4)I would suggest that you get your Mom a Panasonic TZ-4 (just below $(US) 200) or a TZ-5 (just over $(US) 200) The TZ-4 and the TZ-5 are the very same optically. The difference is that the TZ-4 does not have a video clip capability and the LCD screen has fewer pixels that the LCD on the TZ-5. Naturally the TZ-5 is equipped with a video clip capability. The TZ-5 is a very compact camera. The TZ stands for "travel zoom,"it has 10X of optical zoom, so when Mom is not taking her e-bay photos, the TZ-4 or TZ-5 will make a nice personal camera for her that she could use fora cruise vacation perhaps.

(5) I took the attached photo of the pendant that I was wearing today on my often used rose colored towel. I used a table next to a window for the lighting. And I used a Panasonic TZ-5 in the "ia" or "intellligent auto" mode with the camera in the macro or close-up position. No flash was used and I took the photo hand held.

(6) I then used Fast Stone Image viewer 3.5 (a free download) to reduce the photo to the size needed.

So thats all you need to do as well as some suggestions. I hope that helps.

Sarah Joyce

[Alan T]

nialater wrote:

...I woud like to be able to connect it to the computer in the eisiest way possible(probably usb port)...

Much the easiest way to do this is to buy a cheap card reader, which will plug in to a USB port, and allow drag and drop file transfer in a way with which most computer users should be familiar.

That way you don't get tangled up with the camera manufacturer's proprietary software, which often looks suspiciously as though it's designed to lock you in to that company's cameras, and which may or may not be easy to use. You don't necessarily need to use the CDs that come with the camera at all.