Adventures in purchasing

Discussion in 'The Green Room' started by Forbin, Jun 7, 2017.

  1. Forbin

    Forbin Do you feel fluffy, punk?

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    Time for a new camera - my 10MP canon Eos is getting on in years.
    After much searching, and giving it a price ceiling of $600, I decided on the Nikon 5500. 24 megapixels and HD video. It's available as a package with the usual short zoom lens and a long zoom lens. (can't wait to try HD video with a 300mm Nikon lens!). Our credit card billing cycle dictated that I had to wait till June 1 to avoid too much shit on one bill. i started looking a few weeks before that.

    Amazon had a few options at around the $600 mark. But as the weeks passed, their options changed, and even the page I had bookmarked showed a higher price of over $680.

    Best Buy, B&H Photo in NY, and the Nikon home page all showed the kit for $599, even while Amazon's price rose. We deal with B&H at work, and I know they have a long reliable history. That particular camera set was out of stock, so I clicked the "notify me when available" button.

    May 30, I got the email saying it was in stock, and a button to click to "order online now!" My lovely wife said "Oh, go ahead, your birthday's coming up."
    I clicked the button, but the page hadn't been updated yet. A couple of hours later I tried again. The page now said "Ordering for this item will be available June 1 at 9:45PM" :wtf: That was a new one on me, but what the hell. I checked the siate the morning of June 1, and it still said wait till 9:45PM.

    9:50PM on June 1, I once again clicked the ordering link in the email.
    "Website unavailable" :wtf: . I tried going to the B&H home screen and got the same thing :bang: . So I hit reply on the email they'd sent and told them their website was down. I got a robo-response: "Thank you for your patience. We are closed while we celebrate the Shavuot holiday."
    :ualbert:
    I forgot the owners were Orthodox.

    Nothing against that, but I was primed. Fuck 'em. They led me on and dumped me. I ordered the damn thing from Nikon direct.

    It's coming UPS, and requires a signature on delivery. You just KNOW we won't be home when it comes. I notified the neighbors and left a note on the door.

    Jeez.
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  2. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    I just bought that same camera package a couple of weeks ago from Adorama.

    [​IMG]

    It's got the smallest SLR-type body I've ever seen. The only one I've seen and used that comes close is the old Pentax MX I owned in the 80s and 90s.

    [​IMG]

    I have pretty big hands and they just swallow that little camera. :lol:



    I haven't had time to really mess with it yet, but I do know I don't really care for the crop-frame sensor. The wide end of the 18-55mm looks great through the viewfinder, but it clearly gets cropped when you snap the shutter. Because of that, I'll be buying a 10-24mmn in the very near future. :garamet:

    That lens by itself costs more than the entire "kit" sold by the various retailers. :marathon:

    For future reference, check out 42nd Street Photo in NYC. They often have prices that beat B&H and all the others, especially for still gear. I plan to buy that Nikon 10mm from them because their price is more than a hundred dollars cheaper than anybody else's.
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  3. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    Also, I usually get high-dollar items delivered to my office. That way if I'm not around at the time, the receptionist can sign for them. Now that my wife works from home I don't do it as frequently as I used to, but in the last month I've had that Nikon delivered at work as well as a $2500 Dell laptop.

    That said, given who your employer is it might not be possible though. :chris:
  4. Forbin

    Forbin Do you feel fluffy, punk?

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    I think it would have to come in thru shipping & receiving, then sit in the loading dock for about a week before somebody decided to bring it to me. :lol:

    That's disturbing about the cropped wide shots. My cannon shows you almost exactly what you get.
    We've gt a Nikon 10mm at work I can, um, borrow.
    My cube at 10mm:
    DSC_1009.jpg
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  5. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    Yeah, that's what I'm talkin' 'bout. :techman:

    I love wide angle lenses. I have a small platoon of them for my big broadcast camera as well as one for my small personally-owned video camera.

    To paraphrase the editor of a professional publication I get, I want a lens so wide that I can photograph the back of my own head. :bergman:
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  6. Forbin

    Forbin Do you feel fluffy, punk?

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    It also came in handy when they wanted to do a group shot in a lab that was only eight fucking feet wide! :wtf:
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2017
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  7. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    When I first started at this station, I didn't have a wide angle because they didn't have much in the way of support gear at the time. It sucked because the station I'd just left lavishly equipped its photography staff (though that changed within a year or two of me leaving). :marathon:

    Some months later I vociferously complained about it to the guy who was chief photographer at the time and he asked why I needed one so badly.

    I said, "Because I'm literally backing into walls trying to fit stuff in the damned shot! :ualbert:"


    I got my wide angle about two weeks later. :bergman:
  8. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    BTW, what body is that lens on in that photo?
  9. Forbin

    Forbin Do you feel fluffy, punk?

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    Good ol' D90.
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  10. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    That's good to know. It's also crop frame, so it looks like I can buy that 10mm zoom with confidence.
  11. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    I still have an old Olympus OM-10 in a drawer. The camera needs some minor repairs. I have a telephoto and a wide-angle lens in addition to the standard one it came with, but it's been so long since I used it that I don't remember the specs any more. But it's a film camera anyway and no-one seems to want those any more.
  12. Forbin

    Forbin Do you feel fluffy, punk?

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    I never noticed! Should be okay with the new one then.

    Report from home at lunchtime: My wife got home for lunch just as the UPS guy was getting back in his truck. He yelled to her that he saw the note, and the neighbors have the package. The neighbor came over with it as he was telling her. Whew!
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  13. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    You're going to be amazed at how tiny the body is compared to most DSLRs. My daughter's Canon T-5 seems positively chunky compared to the little Nikon.
  14. Forbin

    Forbin Do you feel fluffy, punk?

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    It's downright teensy!! 6000x4000 is... wow.
    Here's a pigeon on the neighbor's feeder at 30 feet, at 300mm. This is resized from 6000 down to 1024 wide:
    DSC_0005wide.jpg


    This is cropped to 1024x800, but keeping the original 300 dpi, so this is the "real" size of this part of the image.
    DSC_0005.jpg

    Gasp.
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  15. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    Other than the hand-me-down Nikon Coolpix I inherited from my daughter when I upgraded her to a newer model several years ago, this 5500 is the first digital still camera I've owned (not counting my phones). Definitely the first DSLR I've owned (the rest were all film cameras).

    But, as I said in a Facebook comment (and IRL) a couple of weeks ago:

    It's not the hardware
    *points to phone*
    It's the software
    *points to brain*

    :walz:
  16. Dinner

    Dinner 2012 & 2014 Master Prognosticator

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  17. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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  18. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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  19. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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  20. Forbin

    Forbin Do you feel fluffy, punk?

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  21. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    And this bit from the Rockwell website gives you some indication of how much field of view is lost with crop-sensor cameras:

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