Photographing a reel so a buyer can price it

Why six frames and not twenty

A camera roll of forty photographs of a rack is harder to read than six photographs of one reel. The point is not coverage. It is that each frame answers a question a buyer would otherwise ask on a site visit: what is this, how much is left, how has it been treated, and can it physically leave the building.

Take the same six, in the same order, for every reel. Then the set becomes a routine you can hand to anybody on site, including somebody who has never photographed cable before.

The six frames

Full reel: the whole drum, the floor beneath it and a little of what is around it, from about ten feet back at chest height. Flange and tag: square on, tag filling the frame, one more frame with the flange edge showing so the tag is tied to that drum. Jacket print: one clean run, close enough that type, size and voltage read at normal size on a screen. Cut end: straight down the conductor so strand count and metal color show. Damage: only if there is damage, close enough to show whether it is a scuff or a breach. Storage position: what sits above the reel, what it stands on, the aisle, and the door it has to pass through.

Five of those are about the cable. The sixth is about the move, and it is the frame sellers skip most often. A reel that cannot get out of a basement is not a reel that can be sold.

• Full reel with floor and surroundings
• Flange and tag, square on and legible
• Jacket print, one clean run
• Cut end showing strand count and metal
• Damage close-up, if any exists
• Storage position, including the way out

Light, focus and scale

Shade beats sun and overcast beats both, because hard light blows out the white print on a black jacket. Turn the flash off for the tag and the print. If the only light is a work lamp, move it to the side so it rakes across the surface instead of reflecting straight back.

Tap to focus and hold, then look at the screen before walking away. Print that is legible to your eye is often illegible in a photograph taken a step too far back. Put a glove or a tape measure in the full-reel frame for scale, and do not crop the flange edge out of the shot, because the flange is what tells a buyer which lifting equipment is needed.

Naming, sending and keeping

Number the frames to the manifest line, not to the camera roll. Line fourteen becomes 14a through 14f, so nobody has to work out which reel IMG 8832 belongs to. Send the originals rather than the compressed copies a messaging app produces, because that compression is exactly what turns legible print into gray mush.

Keep the set with the manifest when the lot moves to a second reviewer. Photographs taken in March are still the record in September, and a reel that has sat untouched since then is described by the pictures taken when it was first looked at.

What to send with the images

Send the six frames, the reel weight, the reel number and one line of text saying what the reel is. If a frame is missing because there is no damage, say so, so the gap is not read as an oversight. If the tag is gone, lead with that and put the print frame second.

That package is short enough to send from a camera in a bay and complete enough to be priced without a return visit.