Your best photography bargain

Your best photography bargain

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Kewy

Original Poster:

1,462 posts

93 months

Tuesday 22nd January 2019
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Over the weekend I made a cheeky offer on a lens on ebay, after a bit of back and forth and some counter-offers I managed to win said lens for £60.

The lens in questions was a Nikkor AF 24mm F2.8 D – not a new lens by any sense, but still listed for around £450 on Nikon and Amazon, cheapest I could find it even second hand was about £160.

Safe to say I was chuffed to bits, will make a nice addition to my travel kit as the D prime lenses are some of the smallest Nikon lenses on the market.

In a not so impressive find, I recently picked up a (1 year old) second hand D750 with only 3000 shutter actuations for £820!

So as per the thread title, what great photography bargains have you lot picked up in the past?

Craikeybaby

10,369 posts

224 months

Tuesday 22nd January 2019
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I walked in to my local LCE with a load of Canon kit that I was no longer using and walked out with a new Fuji set up and £50.

CubanPete

3,630 posts

187 months

Tuesday 22nd January 2019
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I bought a second hand zoom lens for my Minolta film camera from possibly camera exchange for about £35.

Sony introduced their digital range with the same fitting as Minolta.

Sold the lens a couple of years later on ebay for about £160. Sold the Camera for what felt like 10p.

DIW35

4,145 posts

199 months

Tuesday 22nd January 2019
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Another eBay bargain. I still have all my old film cameras, which use the Canon FD mount. When I first started photography many, many years ago, I wasn't flush with money, and was only able to afford a couple of additional lenses, both Tamron because they were a lot cheaper than their Canon equivalents.

I was able to purchase a Canon FD mount 70-210mm f4 for the princely sum of £25. I wasn't expecting too much at that price, but when the lens turned up it was absolutely mint.

NormarkSuperswede

168 posts

62 months

Tuesday 22nd January 2019
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S/H ;leica lenses .Like stock stainless Rolex watches. You make money . Most made £1.2k and that was by accident. Someone noticed a extra few numbers on it which to me meant st !


Best now would be 35mm film stock with a long period left of use . Serious money to be made if its good

steveatesh

4,893 posts

163 months

Tuesday 22nd January 2019
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Not sure if this counts as a bargain as it was a new lens, but the Sony 70-200 f2.8 GM bought form ProGadget on eBay for £1800 rather than the nearly £2500 at the time from other retailers.

I did lots of research on ProGadegt first, but I was still uncertain when I pressed the button. Nothing to worry about though, Lens is perfect so I bought the 24-70 f2.8 GM from them too again at a substantial saving.

PartsMonkey

315 posts

136 months

Wednesday 23rd January 2019
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My best bargain so far was picking up an Olympus E-PL6 with the 14-42 pancake lens in an Amazon Black Friday deal for £185. You will still pay more than this for a second hand one today

Another bargain was in John Lewis. I always check their clearance section (red price tags) for bargains and found a Panasonic 12-35mm f2.8 reduced to £399 including their 2 year warranty. At the time second hand ones I were looking at were £500 +. New they were still approx £700+.

Lastly I wanted to pick up a spare battery for my Lumix G80. Genuine Panasonic ones retail at £50 ish. I could get a cheap chinese copy but they all had different specs and didn't feel comfortable buying one. It turns out Sigma use the same battery in their dp Quattro range yet theirs is priced at £19.99 on their UK website despite being made by Panasonic in the same factory!!!

Nigel_O

2,858 posts

218 months

Wednesday 23rd January 2019
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I fancied trying out a Nikon 28-300 - couldn’t find one for less than about £450

Then I spotted a D5600 on Gumtree complete with 28-300 - cheeky offer got it for £525. Kept the lens and sold the body for £375, thus ending up with my desired lens for a net £150


Gad-Westy

14,520 posts

212 months

Thursday 24th January 2019
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Nigel_O said:
I fancied trying out a Nikon 28-300 - couldn’t find one for less than about £450

Then I spotted a D5600 on Gumtree complete with 28-300 - cheeky offer got it for £525. Kept the lens and sold the body for £375, thus ending up with my desired lens for a net £150
I did something similar with a Nikon D3 and lens combo a few years ago. Badly written advert for a camera and lens kit. Can't remember what the lens was but once it was sold, I ended up with a (admittedly well worn in) D3 for about £250. This was at a time when ropey ones would be well over £700. I only intended to keep the D3 for a couple of weeks while my D600 was being repaired (yet again!) but I ended up keeping it for 4 years. Other cameras came and went and temporarily stole my affections but the D3 was always there. It went all over the world with me and despite a few scuffs here and there, worked flawlessly even well past 300k shutter actuations. About a year ago it took a 40ft tumble down a crag and was never found. Was like losing a limb! Bet it would still work if anyone found it!

Kewy

Original Poster:

1,462 posts

93 months

Thursday 24th January 2019
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Some great stories and bargains here.

Slight update, it seems I started this thread prematurely:

My 24mm 2.8 arrived yesterday and the f'ing thing is broken. Knew it was too good to be true. It hunts back and forth for focus but is constantly out of focus no matter where you are in the focal range.

Safe to say I'm not very happy and have packed it back up ready to send back. The description on ebay said 'working as it should', but at the end of the description said S&R – apparently I was supposed to know that S&R meant spares and repairs, despite the very first line in the description saying 'working as it should'

Had a look for an alternative but nothing under about £130 for the same lens at the moment.

Rant over frown

Resolutionary

1,253 posts

170 months

Friday 25th January 2019
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Sorry to hear that your expectations weren't met, never fun when something you hope to be a bit of a bargain turns out to have faults.

My best bargain was a brand new Canon 24mm 2.8 I picked up in Canada for about £80. I don't know if Nikon do a similar item to the Canon pancake? Even at top whack they're only in the mid-hundreds I believe, and I really like mine. Mind you it only works on crop sensors.

Vintage Racer

619 posts

144 months

Friday 25th January 2019
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I bought my Nikon 70-200 f4 from John Lewis early last year after someone put the price at just £795.00 on their website (currently £1259.99).

I spotted it at 14.00 in the afternoon and snapped it up...........it was back to normal, within 2 hours of me buying it, but they honoured the purchase!

Kewy

Original Poster:

1,462 posts

93 months

Friday 25th January 2019
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Resolutionary said:
Sorry to hear that your expectations weren't met, never fun when something you hope to be a bit of a bargain turns out to have faults.

My best bargain was a brand new Canon 24mm 2.8 I picked up in Canada for about £80. I don't know if Nikon do a similar item to the Canon pancake? Even at top whack they're only in the mid-hundreds I believe, and I really like mine. Mind you it only works on crop sensors.
Unfortunately Nikon don't have any pancake equivilants, the lens I bought along with the 50mm D series lens are the smallest you can get I think.

Brand new the 24m 2.8 I want is still around £450 but go for second hand between £100-200 so I'm keeping my eye out for another bargain!

tog

4,516 posts

227 months

Friday 25th January 2019
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Old but decent Manfrotto light stand for £4 in a charity shop : )

GetCarter

29,358 posts

278 months

Friday 25th January 2019
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Local ex pro decided to give all his gear away FOC. Me and a mate got the lot. Must have been £20k's worth (second hand value). Tons of the stuff.

That's a bargain!

rene7

533 posts

82 months

Friday 25th January 2019
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Sigma 500 f4.5 APO & Canon 800mm F5.6 'L' - from same charity shop - got both for £325 smile both came in the original flight cases with both keys toosmile
Have also Picked up other bit & pieces from charity shops including large ManfrottoTripod with gimball head - which I've never used, definitely worth a look if you have the time, there's often plenty of Bodies & smaller zooms & WA lenses which are of no use to me, but for sure they are bargains compared to Fleabay prices.

tog

4,516 posts

227 months

Friday 25th January 2019
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rene7 said:
Sigma 500 f4.5 APO & Canon 800mm F5.6 'L' - from same charity shop - got both for £325 smile both came in the original flight cases with both keys toosmile
Have also Picked up other bit & pieces from charity shops including large ManfrottoTripod with gimball head - which I've never used, definitely worth a look if you have the time, there's often plenty of Bodies & smaller zooms & WA lenses which are of no use to me, but for sure they are bargains compared to Fleabay prices.
That is a proper bargain. Was it a smaller local charity? Most of the bigger ones these days are quite clued up and will sell high value stuff online.

silobass

1,176 posts

101 months

Friday 25th January 2019
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rene7 said:
Sigma 500 f4.5 APO & Canon 800mm F5.6 'L' - from same charity shop - got both for £325 smile both came in the original flight cases with both keys toosmile
Have also Picked up other bit & pieces from charity shops including large ManfrottoTripod with gimball head - which I've never used, definitely worth a look if you have the time, there's often plenty of Bodies & smaller zooms & WA lenses which are of no use to me, but for sure they are bargains compared to Fleabay prices.
Holy crap, the Canon is a £10k lens! Bloody good donation in the first place.

ukaskew

10,642 posts

220 months

Friday 25th January 2019
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Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art for £350 on Amazon Warehouse. It was mint in the box, no idea why they priced it so low. Fantastic lens too, made a profit on it when I left Nikon for Sony!

GravelBen

15,654 posts

229 months

Saturday 26th January 2019
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Kewy said:
Unfortunately Nikon don't have any pancake equivilants, the lens I bought along with the 50mm D series lens are the smallest you can get I think.

Brand new the 24m 2.8 I want is still around £450 but go for second hand between £100-200 so I'm keeping my eye out for another bargain!
The 28mm f2.8D is pretty small too (slightly smaller than the 50mm f1.8D), I picked one up for $70nz recently. Think the 35mm f1.8 is similar size too and can often be found fairly cheap.

My 28mm needed maximum AF fine-tune dialled in to focus accurately which makes me wonder if its had some damage at some point, but very sharp aside from that and nice image quality.

Edited by GravelBen on Saturday 26th January 00:55