Selling Your Camera Gear 101: Tips for Cleaning, Packing & Shipping
- Two microfiber lens cloths (one for the camera body and one for your lenses)
- A rocket air blower
- A lens brush
- Gloves
- Proper sized box
- Bubble wrap or newspaper
- Packing tape
- Optional: printer and scale
photo by PeopleImages via iStock
Selling your camera gear can actually be pretty stressful...
You’re concerned about getting ripped off because selling a camera online through the classic methods, like Craigslist or eBay, means you’re a prime target for scammers.
Plus, you’re worried about getting the most money you can since your gear has already depreciated in value while you’ve owned it.
To maximize the chances of your gear selling for top dollar and to minimize the chances that the gear will be damaged in shipping, you need to learn the proper ways to clean your camera and package it for shipment.
Thankfully, the guys over at Gear Focus, a leading camera resale website, created videos to walk you through these important parts of selling your camera gear.
How to Clean Your Gear
As Gear Focus points out in their video, you’d be pretty upset if a used camera you just bought arrived at your door with fingerprints and dust. So don’t do it to someone else, especially when learning how to clean a camera takes only 5 minutes.
Before you start, make sure you have the following:
Start by brushing dust off of the glass, so that you don’t accidentally scratch your lens by dragging dust across it with a microfiber cloth.
Next, very gently wipe your microfiber cloth in circular motions across the glass. You don’t want to press too hard and accidentally take the protective coating off.
Now that your lens is clean, you’ll want to start on your camera body by gently wiping the lens brush across any crevices.
Next, just like with the lens, you can use a microfiber cloth to gently wipe any smudges off of the camera body.
Once the camera is aesthetically appealing, you’ll want to move on to cleaning the sensor.
It’s very important that you tilt the camera body with the sensor facing the ground, that way any dust or debris falls out of the camera and harmlessly to the floor. Then, you’ll use the rocket blower to puff any dust out of the sensor.
Do not let your rocket blower touch the sensor or any internal parts on the camera.
Once your sensor is completely free of dust, you’re ready to package your camera gear for shipping!
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How to Pack Your Gear When It Sells
Gear Focus points out in their video above that you’ll want to package your gear differently if you’re sending a lens versus if you’re sending both a lens and a camera body.
But, regardless, you’ll need the following items:
Firstly, wrap your lens in one layer of bubble wrap. Then, create a cradle out of newspaper in your shipping box so that you can set your lens right in the middle so it won’t jostle around and hit the box during shipping.
Then, put more newspaper on top of your lens and pack it tightly before closing the box.
It’s helpful for you for insurance purposes to take multiple photos of this process, so that if anything happens during shipping you will have proof that your item was in perfect condition when you boxed it up.
Now, if you’re looking to package your camera gear together for shipping, you’ll want to start in the exact same way as the process above. Wrap your lens in bubble wrap. Then, wrap your camera body in bubble wrap.
You’ll also place both items in a little nest of newspaper, but it’s really important that you place some newspaper between your lens and camera body so that they also don’t bump into each other during shipping.
You should be all good to go! Make sure you ask your shipping carrier to place a “fragile” sticker on your box.
Shipping Tips for Photography Gear
photo by gorodenkoff via iStock
Purchase insurance. I can’t say it enough. If you’re selling your camera gear, chances are it’s worth more than the nominal $50 insurance most shipping carriers include in their pricing structure and you do not want to be responsible for repaying your buyer if your lens breaks due to a careless delivery driver.
Also, include tracking. Depending upon your shipping carrier, it may be more expensive, but that peace of mind is always worth it.
Once your camera is ready to be shipped, make sure you use a trusted and secure resale website, like Gear Focus, to sell your camera gear.
There’s a reason Gear Focus makes videos outlining how to ship photography gear safely - they actually care. Gear Focus is a group of photographers and videographers dedicated to reducing seller fees and creating a safe place for photographers to do business.
In fact, they have some of the smallest seller fees on the market at just 3.5%, which means more cash in your pocket at the end of the day.
Plus, you can rest assured that your buyer is verified and there is a full staff of photographers who are on stand-by in case anything goes wrong.
So, what are you waiting for? Grab your old gear, clean it and package it up, and get it sold on Gear Focus!
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