Ebay Changes

It would appear that Ebay has changed their format to make it all but

unusable for LF. The previous single category of LF, which contained

all cameras, lenses, etc., relating to LF, and was sub-categorized by

format (4X5, 5X7, etc.) has been fragmented into numerous different

areas, cleverly disguising a number of LF lenses under "camera

accessories," rather than "Lenses," etc. Has anyone else noticed

this? Easy fixes that will allow all LF items to be scanned easily?

If not, this is probaby worth complaining about to the Ebay

management, unless my browser just had an attack of the stupids.

 

Thanks,

 

Nathan

They've got everything screwed up there, not just LF. For example, they've put a lot of the studio flash equipment under the Continuous Lighting category. I guess that's what you get when computer geeks organize the website. They are probably getting a whole lot of complaints from the folks whose items have been transferred to the wrong category. It'll all get sorted out once they've cycled through one complete inventory of auctions. That will take a week to 10 days, depending on the length of the auctions on there.

Not that I'm a black helicopter conspiracy type, but...

The way E-bay has continued to subdivide categories most sellers will choose to list the item in more than one category. For instance you may want to list a photflex softbox under light modifiers and studio accessories rather than just the old studio lighting category. Bottome line, more money for e-bay without actually raising their rates. (I know about these kinds of tactics, I do them myself regularly.)

I may have a way for you to get around this problem. I have saved searches for items I am interested in, such as Wollensak and Raptar, by doing a search of all of ebay. The items are unique, and there is very little problems with unwanted items coming up on the search. Any body else tried this?

I hardly ever search ebay by category anyway. I've always had something in mind, and searched the whole site.

 

You need not be exact with a search. "mamiya tlr" will generally bring up all lenses and accessories for mamiya c cameras.

I just search the "Photo" catagory. Ektar finds all the Ektar lenses (and film). Only when I get 100 or more finds to I bother to get more specific.

 

Here's the Phot catagory link:

 

http://listings.ebay.com/aw/listings/list/category625/index.html

noticed this too. A Schneider lens at what seemed a very reasonable first bid received nothing ending yesterday, and I think it was classified in the new ...optics...lenses... route. Perhaps the conspiracy has merit. Doesn't Ebay realize that it negatively affects bidders searches as well, or r they being shortsighted?

Yes, I think the upside of the changes could be that after a short while people who buy sell and browse LF regularly will just post auctions on the LF general categories.

 

Less informed sellers, or those who don't browse ebay will sell stuff under say Lenses/LF or Accesories/LF which people won't bother browing so much, and so will probably go for better prices with less bids... like mis-categorized or misnamed items now.

 

BTW, on doing a general search - the Ebay search engine is somewhat eratic. I frequently come across an item - recently an angulon and then think - hey I should do a general search and see if there are others - it find others, but not the initial one I had found... (and it wasn't a new posted auction either).

 

This happens all the time, so I generally don't trust that the search engine will find all the items.

 

tim

This posting puzzled me so I went back and checked Ebay. It remains possible -- I just did it -- to search within film cameras, large format, and you don't have to first pick 4X5 or whatever as a sub-category. There are 716 items listed in large format, of those 577 are in one category and 153 in another. (The total isn't exactly right, but this happens on Ebay due to time delays.) If you know what you want isn't an 8X10 type of item, then you can make your search more narrow, but I don't see this as a terrible change and a money grubbing effort on Ebay's part.

Yes, but if you go back from LF on Ebay to "film cameras" to "photo & optics" you can then go to Lenses>Large Format or General Accesories>Large Format.

 

Stuff is in these categories which used to be in the general Large Format category, which they now no longer show up on

 

There may be other hidden LF categories I haven't come across in the new setup too.

 

tim

I concur with those who search the photo area for, say, "Dagor"...or whatever. One problem I've come across is that not everyone knows how to spell. If someone spelled a lens as a "Wollensack" instead of "Wollensak", you won't come across it if you spell it "wollensak" [and I've seen that happen plenty]. And many a time I've found items like rollei's or mamiya's in the LF section. There have probably been Imagons and what-not in the Medium format section...who knows...

I doubt that there's really anything that requires categories to be nested. While they may have LF categories distributed across different parts of EBay, I don't see why they couldn't create an LF "view" of the database that would bring all the related LF categories together.

because that way you wouldn't end up huting around here there and everywhere and finding things you never knew you needed!

Which is precisely the point, Tim. The motivation is to 'shop' more. If the categories were layed out as we would like them we would look at fewer items, bid less, purchase less, etc. The idea of doing a search only on Wollensak is fine if you are only looking for a Wollesak lens. It is of very little value if you want a Sironar, but a Sinaron, Caltar or even a Symmar would also be of interest.

I find that I can still search Large Format and find cameras, lenses, tripods, and other stuff. Perhaps some will list large format lenses elsewhere, but that may have happened previously. I believe Ebay previously had more sub-categories under Large Format than now. I also think seaching all of Ebay for titles like Schneider, Wollensak, etc. works well for finding everything, although you might find a Wollensak tape recorder too.

Any one having problems searching does not know how to search. The changes do NOT affect searching, they affect LISTING. eBay has done that for selfish reasons: increase listing revenues. Not knowing beans about photography is an asset for the computer geeks who can make a mess of things while feeling good about it. It is probably the same crew that made a mess of B&H. The more complains they get the more likely it is that they may do something about it. So, write eBay and threaten them that we all will go somewhere else, ...oh yeah?

You think eBay is bad - you should have seen the old (now deceased) Yahoo.co.uk auction site - a Large Format section, but no Medium Format section so all the MF gear ended up in the LF section. Plus, my favorite: an "Enlargers and Filters" section... (there was a separate "Darkroom" section - I'm only suprised they didn't make it a "Darkroom and Camera Bag" section...).

 

I am also jealous about the number of LF items on eBay.com - on eBay.co.uk there are currently 14 items of which 3 are non LF....

 

Cheers,

For those who think the search on ebay is a panacea to their problems, please note that it does not always pick up all of the items that it should. For example, I've seen items when perusing their site, and then have done a search to find like items, only to find that the item that piqued my interest was not captured in the search.

 

In addition to this problem, I learned the hard way while selling an item this past weekend that the "ending today" option does not always gather all of the items ending today.

 

So I would add to your collective complaints one additional - their data base is either poorly designed or poorly implemented. Perhaps the subdivion of categories is contributing to this problem.

 

We should forward this entire thread to their customer service group.

 

Bruce

I just thought I'd chime in with a little search tip that I've found very useful for filtering out unwanted search results. You can create a comma-delimited list of unwanted terms, put it in parentheses, and put a minus sign in front of it so that any of the items containing these terms won't be included in the search results. The following is my saved search for Graflex roll film backs:

 

(graflex,graphic,singer) (roll,film,back) -(holder,holders,manual,adapter,adapters,22,23,50,cut,xl)

 

In order for the item to make the search results list it must contain at least one term from the first list, one from the second, and none from the third.

 

Of course, if you do frequent searches like this it pays to save the search in your Favorites tab. You can even have eBay automatically notify you when new results are found.

 

Hope this helps,

 

John

If I'm buying I put in a search term like "graflex" and check off the search titles and descriptions box. That way if graflex wasn't in the title but in the description I'll find it. I don't usually search by category because they don't seem to want to display them in order of how much time before the end of the auction and I'm usually a last minute shopper....