I am trying to take pictures of clothing to sell on ebay. How do I get better pics of black clothing?

I have 2 black tops, a pair of black pants, and a pair of black shorts and I tried taking pics of them against a white blanket, but they still don't appear very well.

Public Comments

1. white background and lots of light to create shadows and highlights.
2. Without seeing an image, I can only guess what the problems might be. 1) Cameras meter to a middle tone. Black and white are at the extreme ends. Cameras generally turn black and white to a grey color if not metered correctly. You will most likely need to adjust your exposure compensation to add or subtract up to a stop of exposure to get the whites white and the blacks black. 2) Lighting is important. If you can, setup a make shift studio. Product lighting is important. You might need to get some lights(you can go cheap and buy some work lights from Lowe's or Home Depot - just make sure you adjust the white balance to match the tungsten light bulbs they use. If you can find a sewing dummy or even get a friend to model, that will help give the product some depth and allow for the lights to be effective.
3. try to get pictures lighted at an angle of below 45 degrees.
4. Lighting is key as it has been pointed out, but something to consider. If the clothing has texture try to get a close up shot to show the texture/color, and with this picture set it on top of the large garment picture. So you basically get a large picture of the garment, and on any one of the corners they could see what the texture is. You could also opt to use the texture picture as another picture. How is the light going to hit your garment? Depending on the texture, no amount of lighting may help show the colors properly. Introduce some folds. If you can imagine the bottom of drapes how often they'll form a W or wavy set of Ss (just the way it falls) this helps show different points of light as the folds travel upward. The folds in a nutshell will give you depth, and with depth you'll pick up more than just the light hitting a flat garment and showing only one possible color. Varying light will show the range of color the item has and possibly give you better sales results. Good luck!! Oh and a stark white contrast isn't necessarily the best backdrop, try something a shade or two darker maybe a gray? Just an idea. Best of luck!
5. Clothing that is black, or very dark, requires a much softer lighting to bring out texture than do light grays or whites. That means to skip the on-camera flash, use a tripod, and turn on all of the room lights. As ugly as they are to work under, overhead fluorescents work fairly well with dark fabrics. They are not very good at color reproduction, but as you're talking about very dark clothing, that should not be a problem. As for a background, don't use white as it can actually hide details in the clothing. Go for something more middle gray and you'll find it works much better. There's no need to get perfect lighting for ebay sales as most folks don't have color calibrated monitors, nor are the photos ever seen large. Better to focus on clean, unobtrusive backgrounds and even light.