eBayNut

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In order to post pictures on eBay, you need a digital camera. No, a phone camera will not do. Read on.

I've been using an Epson 3000Z as my main eBay camera. It died. This seemed the perfect time to find a newer better camera. After days of in person and online research I settled on the Kodak Z740 as the best eBay camera in existence.

Reasons:

A 50X zoom 5 Megapixel camera! That's 10X optical and 5 X digital. Also, once you learn how to use it, you find that it will focus down to 4 inches. This beats the 12 to 20 inches I was getting from my Epson.

It is also a true TTL (Through The Lens) reflex camera. With the Epson, the back screen was TTL (as are all digital cameras), but the viewfinder looked out through a port in the front of the camera and not out through the lens. The Z740 gets both views through the lens. What you see is what you get.

Attachments: This camera will take filters, wide angle lenses, telephoto lenses and macro lenses. These lenses add onto the existing lens, they do not screw in replacing the existing lens. You are in the $750 to $1,200 range to get true interchangeable lenses. This is the next best thing and was the primary reason I chose the earlier Epson camera, lens attachments.

I bought mine in a local store using a $40 discount coupon I had received. However, search eBay for Kodak Z740 and you will find lots of refurbished ones for less than the $299 list price. Some come in "packages" or "bundles" that include tripods, filters, wide angle/telephoto converters, battery charges, etc.

The three primary considerations in a digital camera are (1) lens quality (you want glass, get Zeis, Leica, or Kodak Retinar the rest are plastic), (2) threads for filters and lens attachments, and (3) optical zoom quality. That last one is important if you will be photographing small objects such as thimbles, brooch pins, coins, etc. A camera with 200X zoom that gets only 2X optical and 100X digital is worthless because digital zoom is ALWAYS a pixel looser. Picture quality will suffer. Since most digital cameras get only 7X to 12X TOTAL (optical plus digital), finding a camera that could get 10X OPTICAL was a dream come true.

Finally, a disclaimer. If you are only shooting pictures of pets and kids and friends, get any camera. The $19.95 Barbie Digital will fit your needs just fine. For eBay, you want picture quality and most non-professionals tend to look only at the pixel count. These folks believe that 7 megapixels is vastly better than 5 megapixels. Only if you know what you are doing. Give me a camera that meets the three qualities I listed above and I will outperform your 7 MegaPixel camera (that does not have the three qualities listed) every time. Even if my camera (with the three qualities listed above) has only 1.8 MegaPixels!

So why did I start out saying a phone camera would not do? Easy, it has NONE of the three desired qualities we discussed above AND it has a low Pixel count. In other words, it is the worst possible "Kid And Dog" camera and its photos are not suited for auctions if you are going for top dollar bids.