Let's start with a horrible example. "I have a Model T inherited from a relative and I want to sell it. How much is it worth?" Believe it or not, that question is occasionally posted on Model T forums. It may sometimes state the year of the car,  but is otherwise so vague as to be meaningless. The first thing you need to do if you don't know about what you're selling, is to find out what it is. That's a whole other subject.  Once you know what you have, you're ready to sell it and this page may help you do that.

To sell any collector car, it helps to provide as much information as possible. This is especially true for a Model T. This most plentiful of antique cars has a large following of folks who know it well, and if they're shopping for a T they want to see what features yours has. It's good to provide a list, but better to add pictures. That's pictures. Plural. Not a picture. With today's digital photography, a dozen or more photos don't cost any more than one, so you might as well do the job right. This should be obvious, but take pictures of the car, not pictures of old pictures. Some cameras will let you show the date of a picture in the picture.

Before you start taking pictures consider the setting. The idea is to show the car, so if it's in a dark place and/or hidden by stuff stacked on it, fix that. Obviously the first thing is to uncover your subject. Once you have it uncluttered, consider the lighting. If the car isn't movable and you have to shoot your pictures indoors, you want adequate lighting. It's better to have several light sources and avoid using a camera flash, which often produces a picture with a lot of glare. Many times a flash also lights part of the picture too much and leaves part of it too dark. Using available light, if it's bright enough, is often better than flash. The only problem with using available light is that camera movement can give you blurry pictures, so you want the camera on a tripod or other solid object. If the vehicle can be moved, avoid shooting indoors. Roll it outside where it can easily be viewed from all sides. The ideal time to do this is in daylight on a slightly overcast day to soften dark shadows.

In preparing this page I asked for suggestions, and this is one I received: "When you take pictures, remove your dang teddy bears and grandma's quilt from the back seat. Take 3 minutes to knock the worst of the dust off the body and the engine.  And most of all,  We don't care how your car looks with you (or 1/2 nekkid women) standing in front of it."

You should include overall views of the car and also provide a closer look at various features.

Overall views should show the vehicle but be close enough not to waste space on the surroundings. You should have at least eight views. Those will be straight-on shots from the front, back, and both sides, and from all four corners.

Move in closer to show various features. For a Model T this should include front axle and springs, rear axle and springs, a wheel (each of the wheels if they're not all the same), radiator and shell, engine compartment from both sides, front interior, rear interior,  dash and controls. Those should be the bare minimum. Again, extra digital shots are free. So you can add close-ups of desirable accessories and other parts and features.

What kind of camera? Phone cameras in most cases are today's version of the Instamatic. Handy perhaps, but usually not very good. If you're shooting pictures you'd like to keep, it's best to  shoot them  full size with a real camera. Then, when you post them online, you can make a copy to resize and keep the full size original for future use. When you resize the copy, make it small enough to fit on a computer screen, but not too small to show details. Some websites have a limit on the file size of pictures you can post, and you'll have to shrink copies of your photos to be under their limit.

If you're showing off a car online, this is better...

... than this.

 

If you want to include a photo of the car in a picturesque setting that's fine.

But you should also have a cropped  or closer version of the view.

Sometimes, especially shooting close-ups, you may get a picture out of focus or otherwise poor. It may be hard to see this kind of problem on a tiny camera or phone screen, so it's best to look at your pictures on a larger screen to see if they're good enough to use. If they're not, shoot better ones.

Why settle for this? If  you have a bad picture, shoot again.

Remember, extra digital pictures don't cost any extra.