At 6p.m. tonight, a sliver of Elton John’s famous photo collection is scheduled to sell at Christie’s. Photo collections don’t usually get star billing, or an evening tee time. But Christie’s is gambling that the sale of 80 or so pictures – all pretty, pleasing, and with a rock ‘n’ roll provenance – will draw both photography lovers and Rocket Man fans, and send bids over the sale’s $600,000-$900,000 presale estimate.

Meanwhile, at the other houses, there are iconic images for sale this week by photographers who have only recently departed. It was a fatal year for several of the most beloved. The world lost Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, and Henri Cartier-Bresson and works by these masters are appearing on the block as speculators hope to catch a market on the rise.

Mr. John’s material is mostly low in value but the name certainly adds luster to Christie’s lineup. The singer began his buying in 1991, soon after he gave up the bottle. While cleansing his soul, he lined his walls with crisp photographic images of flowers, portraits, and still-lifes. The star lot is a 1987 Robert Mapplethorpe “Calla Lily” in dramatic purple and yellow (est. $30,000-$50,000).

In 2002, Mr. John hired a curator to organize his photo collection, now estimated to contain more than 4,000 images. Jane Jackson inventoried Mr. John’s acquisitions, where she found hundreds of works by some artists (John Dugdale, Irving Penn) and gaps in other areas. The auction is a little spring cleaning as he gets his collection ready for its next showing, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, in 2008. Mr. John is also redecorating his London townhouse to exhibit his contemporary photographs (as well as one room devoted to Irving Penn). The rest of the collection hangs at his deluxe residences in At lanta, Ga., Old Windsor, England, and Nice, France.

Like Christie’s, Phillips de Pury & Company is fielding a single-owner sale, but its has an entirely different aesthetic. These contemporary works, owned by the German urban planner Bernd Kunne, reflect a Teutonic austerity and a love of architecture. “It isn’t the shock and awe of contemporary art,” said Rick Wester, standing in Phillips’s Chelsea gallery space. Unlike the soothing beauty of Mr. John’s picks, the sterile coolness of Mr. Kunne’s collection could drive one to drink.

For those on a budget, the collection includes artists virtually unknown in the United States, including works for well less than $5,000. Matthias Hoch’s “Paris #15, 1999” an eerily compelling vista of a hallway to nowhere, is estimated at $1,500-$2,000, while Oliver Boberg’s “Aussentreppe, 1998” (est. $3,000-$5,000) transforms a concrete staircase into a striking blend of lights and darks.

Mr. Wester joined Phillips in July to take the helm of the photography department, which had been in a state of flux ever since Christie’s hired Joshua Holdeman last spring. Mr. Wester is still working for dealer Howard Greenberg even as he consults for Phillips, and he had just a few months to organize the sale. In the meantime, Phillips appears to be honing in on more recent material, with sales concentrating on a lower per lot value.

While he sorts out where to position Phillips’s market, Sotheby’s seems to be positioning itself as the place to buy and sell top-end photographs. In April, Sotheby’s held three auctions and resoundingly owned the top-end of the U.S. auction market. Their fall sale is estimated at $2.8 million-$4.2 million, reflecting the decision of Denise Bethel, a 15-year veteran at Sotheby’s, to continue to opt for a small, choice sale, with about half as many lots as Christie’s.

Ms. Bethel touted the continuity of their photography experts. “Without catalogue raisonnes, your standard of rarity becomes yourself,” said Ms. Bethel. Paintings experts can rely on extensive reference material and scholarship when researching a work. In the photography field, the scholarship is being invented on a daily basis. To establish the history of a photograph, Ms. Bethel and her team often make dozens of phone calls, sleuthing the history of a piece across decades and state lines.

The fall sale includes a 1929 print by Edward Weston, “Pepper,” which is the first one Ms. Bethel has seen in her 25 years in the photography business. Weston gave the print to his wife, Flora, as a New Year’s Eve gift. Flora came from a wealthy Los Angeles family, owners of the Los Angeles Times, and was the mother of Weston’s four sons.

She continued to support Weston financially even after he took off for Mexico with artist Tina Modotti in 1923. Once Flora’s munificence ended, he was just another starving artist, unable to sell his photos for even $10, according to Christopher Mahoney, a Sotheby’s photography expert. Today, Weston is sought after by collectors; “Pepper” is estimated at $70,000-$100,000.

Another highlight is a vintage print by Diane Arbus, whose forthcoming Metropolitan Museum of Art retrospective is keeping the market for her work hot. “Eddie Carmel, A Jewish Giant With His Parents in the Living Room of Their Home, Bronx, N.Y,” shot and printed by Arbus in 1970, is one of her most famous images. It comes from the collection of Philip Leider, founding editor of Artforum Magazine, an early supporter of Arbus’s work.

Arbus committed suicide before achieving commercial success, but in April Sotheby’s got $478,400 for one of her vintage “Identical Twins” – a world record for a work by the artist sold at auction. The “Eddie Carmel” print is estimated to sell for $250,000 to $350,000.