You don't need a really expensive camera to take good photos for your eBay auctions, but you do want to make sure the camera you buy has the important features. Here are the features you need in a camera for ebay photography and why they are important:

•  Tripod: Almost all cameras have a standard tripod screw mount in the bottom. It is very important to use a tripod when taking auction photos to avoid blurred images that occur when you handhold a camera.

•  Macro Setting: Macro is the photographic term for the ability to focus very close to an object. Typically the macro feature will allow you to focus as close at 3 or 4 inches from the subject. This is important to photograph small objects or to get up close to details you may want to show such as the original manufacturer’s price tag or a maker’s mark on pottery or silver.
  
  
•  White Balance Adjustment:  Basically this is how you adjust a camera to account for different color temperatures of light. Almost all cameras have an automatic white balance, but you want to make sure you get one where you can manually select the white balance between daylight, fluorescent and incandescent.
  
  
• Manual Focus: The auto focus on digital cameras is often fooled. The ability to manually focus on an object or part of an object is very important.
  
  
• Exposure adjustment: The light meter in a camera can be fooled by bright backgrounds. Since we often shoot against a white background especially when using a lighting tent, you need a camera that can adjust for this exposure.
  
  
• Optical zoom: Digital cameras come with both optical zoom and digital zoom. Digital zoom is very restrictive and difficult to work with. Make sure your camera has a basic optical zoom feature. You can tell if it does by pushing the zoom button and seeing if the lens actually moves in and out. If not, they the camera is using digital zoom.
  
  
• Aperture priority setting: The ability to select a small lens opening (aperture) allows you to achieve what is called depth of field. This means that objects close to you and far away are both in focus.
  
  
• USB connection.  Most cameras have these today, but make sure.  There are other ways to get the photos into your computer, but a USB connection is the easiest and fastest.
  

So if you are looking for a camera on eBay or at a camera store, just use this list as a checklist.  If you cannot tell from the auction description, then email this list to the seller (or send the seller a link to this guide) and ask them if the camera has all of these features.

After you buy a camera and a tripod the next best investment you can make to get great pictures is a light tent.  I use the EZ Cube.  They are inexpensive and work great. Just search EZ Cube in the eBay search bar.