Online Buying....Ebay, Photography forums......

Wichita Kansas is a city of nearly 500K people and we are now down to 2 camera stores (at one time there were 5 spread across town and the largest was almost in the center of town.)... when I switched back to Nikon for digital I went to what used to be the largest but is still the nicest store to see what could be had....the owner told me he gave up the Nikon dealership and was now canon....but the other guy about 2 or 3 miles away has been a canon dealer for ever......So I had to start shopping online for what I needed and wanted, to this I am no stranger.....it seems as If I had almost always been a mail order buyer before the internet, due to the fact that no one carried what I was looking for and seriously all the cam stores carried off brand no name accessories at that time...any way......I do spend a lot of time on eBay looking and checking prices of all sorts of photo items and other stuff I have that I want to sell......I have been told that I was crazy to sell and buy on Ebay, instead of the friendly Photo forums....well I sell on Ebay and only accept Paypal as a form of payment...so your safety as well as mine...........but.....the reason i started this bloated dialogue is this......I cannot believe how many people have stuff for sale for too high a price when the whole item is not there.....for instance....I was looking at a lens the title was quite catchy....Like new such and such lens in mint condition ......included in the auction is the lens and front and rear caps.......email seller asking do you have the lens hood......and get a rude response...WAS IT LISTED IN THE AUCTION....i SAID LENS AND CAPS.....2ND EMAIL.......do you have the lens bag?......response: NO ...WAS IT LISTED...GUESS YOU CANNOT READ...LENS AND CAPS THAT IS ALL.......3rd email....Can I pay extra for insurance......RESPONSE....NO!!......
I see all sort of items stating MINT Condition but missing parts.....how is that MINT.......I mean If I offer a car for sale in near Mint or in Mint condition wouldn't require all the parts to be there....seriously folks......I do not care about boxes or warranty cards on used equipment but I want the lens, front and rear caps, lens hood and the protective bag if it is advertised as mint.....now I can even allow for a set screw mark in the rubber bottom of a battery grip and still have it advertised as "like new but used".......

so folks read the whole advertisement and ask lots of questions when buying online and for your own safety use PayPal and make sure the person has at least a 3 day return if not satisfied if the item costs over $20.00 ...selling something used and not having a return is bad also make sure it is insured so if UPS, Fed Ex or USPS damages it a refund can be had.........


Happy and SAFE shopping..............

Copying Files from Small Hard Drive to Larger Hard Drive

My 2.5" laptop external drive was full, this was meant to be a portable hard drive for traveling......but somehow it became just another one of my external drives.....Then all of a sudden I was going to need it and needed to have it empty.....Well I got lucky and found a great deal on Seagate 2TB internal drives (which is what I started using instead of external drives for storage)and I picked up one...........now to copy all the stuff off the 2.5 inch external to the 3.5" Seagate.......I moved all the files that had been imported thru Lightroom 3 and then started the mass exodus of the remaining 29,000+ files.....highlighted all the folders and dragged them to their new home and waited for the Win 7 pop up that would tell me how long this move would take......approx 10 hours.......Time for bed.....so I went to sleep to get this morning and still have over an hour to wait for the move to be finished....So I took hold of the new Seagate 2TB drive to see how hot it is....to my surprise it was not hot at all.....wow the drive is cool the dock is cool.....and everything is super quiet.
So what I use is this: ThermalTake Black Widow Blac X Gaming Hard Drive Dock...this is a single bay dock that I have been using for a couple of years but this is the 1st time I have used it to move files like this...normally I insert a hard drive and download my memory cards from my camera and do my Lightroom and photoshop work then I am done...so it is turned on and running for a few hours (1-4) at a time.....so a 10 hour continual run and nothing heated up is great, as I forgot to turn on my little 10" fan that I have to keep things cooled down since the dock nor the hard drives have a cooling fan (of course).......
My reason for using a hard drive dock and internal hard drives for storage is pretty simple....I use a 3 drive back up system: 1st drive is main working drive and then I have 2 drives that are exact copies of the 1st drive for back up. Now when you do this with external harddrives in enclosures, it takes up tons of room to store external harddrives but internal drives take up a lot less room and can be easily stack on top of each other in a good quality gun safe for safe keeping (make sure the gun safe has a fire rating of at least 1 hour or more)........As the laptop drives get larger in capacity I will be changing from 3.5" desktop drives to the 2.5" laptop drives to save even more space.

Why I quit offering International shipping when selling on EBAY.....

Over the last 11 years of using Ebay for buying and selling, I always offered world wide shipping any that PayPal was available and to any confirmed PayPal address.....but no longer and here is why.....and I know it seems like an insult to possible International Buyers and for that I am sorry.
In the past I would sell and item to someone in Germany or the Ukraine and off it would go......then I had to fill out a little green form, single page....4 or 5 questions...no problem there was a space I could even put it was of no commercial value...so that customs new it was a used item and I was not a retail business selling for profit.......now I have to fill out a form that is nearly impossible to understand the terminology and when I call the USPS number for help it seems they do not know what is supposed to go on certain lines...and because of this if I make a mistake on the form the item could get held up in customs or worse sent back to me or even worse cost the buyer to have to pay some sort of import tax.......I do not understand why our govt keeps wanting to make stuff more and more complicated for the little person....it really is a pain in the rear end......any way that is why I no longer offer worldwide International shipping on my eBay auctions.....

Forgot how much fun FILM can be......

Dug out my Nikon F70.....yes I said F70...that was the European model of the USA's N70....it had a nice quartz date / time on the back and a switch to shoot panorama shots......was not my bag back in the day...but I got one great deal on the camera when I purchased it.......
Well today i inserted 2 new CR123A batteries and locked my Sigma 50-500 on it...turned it on and half pressed the shutter button and ............. well the speed with which it grabbed focus was unreal...my D300 is no where as fast to grab focus with that lens.....the film has been in the camera for many years so who knows what it will turn out like but...it was just amazing at how blazing fast it focused......I will be getting a roll or 2 of Fuji 100 or even 50 iso print film as soon as I get to a real camera store and have a go at shooting film again......unfortunately my only real option is to use my AIS manual focus lenses for now if I want any real control over shutter speed or aperture...so that blazing fast focus won't be happening with the AIS lenses as they are manual focus but sharp as freshly slivered glass......so let the fun begin...again.

Quantum Cable MKZ9 - review....rant

I have been using Quantum batteries and cables for most of my 30+ yrs of doing photography.....i have used the batteries and cables for Sunpak 522's, 622's, 622 super Pro's, Minolta flashes and Nikon flashes....but the cable the cable for the new Nikon SB900 is junk....or at least the one I have is junk.....flimsy made....without 2 rubber bands and a small stack of washers to press the thing down it looses contact...it has no real locking mechanism like the MKZ3 cable that has twist locking mechanism inside the dummy battery...you pressed down and turn the lock and it stayed......with the MKZ9 you have exposed wires that will in a short while wear thru and possible short out......This is the worst made piece of PRO photo equipment I have ever had my hands on....I emailed Quantum and pretty all they had to say was so sorry your are displeased maybe you should consider moving over to the turbo line which the cable connects to the front of the SB900 instead of thru the battery compartment......my answer was...I will sell off my Quantum Equipment and buy from China...for less than the cost of 2 MKZ9 cables I can get......complete battery, charger and cable to connect to the front port of the SB900.......normally I do not like spending money overseas with our bad economy, but a so sorry email from you and I will not do business with you any longer and I will sell all of your products that I am using currently...and Chinese products have been climbing in quality for a while now.......so it looks lie it will be good bye to usa made Quantum...........