Photographing a reel for valuation

The six that do the work

Each photograph answers a different question, and a missing one produces a question that only a visit can answer. The table sets out what each has to show and how it usually goes wrong.

Light and scale

Daylight is almost always better than flash, and overcast daylight is better than hard sun. Hard sun puts half the reel in shadow and blows out the white of a paper tag; overcast light is flat and readable. If the sun is out, put yourself between the sun and the subject so the reel is lit from behind you, and photograph the tag in the shade of your own body rather than in direct light.

Scale is what turns a photograph into a measurement. Lay a tape measure across the flange and photograph the whole diameter with the tape in place; that single image lets a buyer read the flange size and estimate the build. For the cut end, put a rule or a coin beside the section. For the wide shot, a person, a pallet or a vehicle in frame gives the reel a size that a bare photograph cannot.

A small card with the line number written on it, placed against the flange in every photograph, saves an enormous amount of confusion when twelve reels arrive as forty images. It is the photographic equivalent of numbering the manifest.

The jacket print and the cut end

These two carry the most information per pixel, and they are the two most often ruined. For the print, find a section that is not scuffed, wipe it with a dry rag, and if it is still illegible try a slightly damp cloth and let it dry. Then get close, fill the frame with four or five inches of cable, and hold the camera parallel to the surface rather than at an angle. Print is embossed or inkjet, and raking light from the side brings embossed characters up where flat light hides them.

For the cut end, the cable must be cut square, and that cut is work on a conductor — so it happens only on cable the owner has released, done by whoever is authorised to do it. Once it is cut, stand the cable end-on to the camera, fill the frame with the section, and focus on the center rather than the near edge. A section photographed straight on shows the conductor metal, the strand pattern, the insulation wall thickness as a ring, and the shield construction in one image, which is why it settles so many arguments.

If the cable is armoured or lead-sheathed, take one extra frame showing the layers stepped back — jacket stripped, armour visible, bedding and sheath exposed. That is a construction drawing made of copper and polymer, and a buyer will read it faster than any description.

What not to do

Do not photograph through plastic wrap. The reflection hides the tag and the print, and it makes the cable look better protected than it is. If a reel is wrapped, photograph it wrapped for the wide shot and unwrap a small window for the tag and print shots.

Do not shoot into the light. A reel silhouetted against a bright sky or a doorway is unreadable, however dramatic it looks on a phone screen. Do not use flash on a glossy jacket from close range, because the hotspot wipes out the print you were trying to capture.

Do not send screenshots, messaging-app thumbnails or images that have been through three resends. Compression destroys exactly the detail that matters: the small characters on a tag and the thin print on a jacket. Send the original files.

Do not photograph one reel twelve times and the other twenty not at all. A buyer prices the lot, and the reels that are missing from the photographs are the ones that get priced at the bottom of the range, because the buyer has to assume the worst.

Do not stand on cable to get a better angle. It is the most common way a seller damages material while trying to sell it, and the dent will be visible in the photograph you take next.

How to send them

Name the files after the manifest line number and what they show: 04-tag, 04-cut-end, 04-jacket-print. That naming turns an album into evidence and lets a buyer pull the exact image they need while pricing a line. If you have no manifest, still number the reels, with a paint pen on the flange, and use that number in the file names.

Send one message per lot rather than a trickle of images over a week. Include the manifest if there is one, the location, and a single sentence about access. If the files are large, a shared folder link is fine, provided it does not expire before anybody has looked at it and does not require an account.

Expect a short list of follow-up requests, and treat it as normal rather than as doubt. The usual ones are a clearer tag shot, the other flange, the cable end with a rule beside it, and a wide shot showing how the reel is sitting on the ground. Those four questions are the difference between a valuation and a site visit, and they take ten minutes to answer.

• Shoot the six, in the order listed, for every reel you want priced.
• Put a tape measure and a labelled card in the frame.
• Photograph tags and print in shade, parallel to the surface, filling the frame.
• Send originals, named by manifest line, in one message.
• Answer follow-up requests with new photographs rather than assurances.