2nd hand Pro camera's more suspectable for failure?

As I did some reading on the F4 shutter, I'm baffled again with the info this:
http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/nikonf4/reliability/index3.htm
is giving to the people interested in the story behing the knobs and dials.

Wonderful and very interesting when you're a tech freak.

rhmimac

and the story continues...

My F4S was examined and the shutter found NOK.
The shop did a repairjob and placed a new shutter under warranty.(no costs)
The machine is back in business which is great.

So:
1. I never would buy any camera without a minimum of warranty, be it 2nd hand or new.
2. Go and spend your $/€/£ in a shop you can trust. It's all worth it when the sh.t hits the fan...

rhmimac

budrichard said:

As a former photog for a large Midwestern newspaper, I can tell you that Pro's view thier cameras as tools to be used and not as objects of veneration. They are used until they malfunction and then repaired, if they malfunction often, they are traded for different gear that works.
I would never purchase gear that a Pro had used heavily, now matter how well it may have maintained.
That said I have purchased two M bodies and lenses from Pro's. One was a portrait photographer that also collected cameras and to fund his switch to digital Canon, he sold me an M6 and two ASPH lenses, all still in boxes with recipets and Registrations. The other purchase was from a Long Island Times photographer that had purchased an M7 and never used it, but with digital, had no use for it, the camera was new and a good value.
But a camera or lens used every day by a Pro is subjected to much more usage than any amature would ever experience. There is a reason that Pro cameras and lenses are designed to a higher standard than Prosumer or amature equipment and it shows in the price tag.
On the other hand a well heeled amature photographer is a great source for used equipment. In many cases the stuff is barely used and essentially new, the owner not being able to bear the thought of damaging such expensive equipment. -Dick

Click to expand...

I have 3 Nikon F that were 4 to 7 years in Vietnam. They are doing fine. All they require is maintenance.

I bought a second-hand Rolleiflex 2.8 a few months ago. It was heavily worn on the outside, but the optics were in good condition, the shutter and crank ran smoothly and the price was right. I was told by the shop staff that it was previously owned by a pro. I took it outside to load it and it promptly ate my film. On the second try it ate my film again (same roll.) Upon closer inspection, I found that one of the rails? on the back door that helps run the rollers had been bent and warped - either by repeated opening and closing, or just forceful closing. The store refunded my money, left the price untouched, wrote "junk" on the label and put it right back into the window literally five minutes later Lesson learned: ask to run a test roll through it next time.

I'm extremely wary of buying dead stock, new-in-box and/or sparkling-clean cameras. I had a friend who insisted on this, and a few times he was bitten. The funniest was when he bought a Rolleiflex T that had been sitting in a glass cabinet for years. We went all the way out into the middle of no where for a day of shooting. He loads the film, cranks it to take his first picture and the camera quickly seized up. I had to stifle my laughter as he fumed around - I though he was going to pitch the poor thing into a river or kick it into the trees

I'll buy something worn and working over a museum show piece. Cameras (lubricants, really) don't like to sit around doing nothing.

My first Nikon F2 I picked up at a local camera swap meet for $200. Out of about five bodies this was the cleanest looking one. I have no idea who previous owners were. Without even shooing a roll, I sent the camera in for an c.l.a. Got the camera back on not long after noticed a shutter bounce problem. I took it to another shop and they fixed it. However a couple months later the same problem along with some unexposed frames. Back the shop (the second one) it goes. The camera sits there for months because the cannot find parts. During this time I pick up another F2 body to use, this one a "bargain" grade from KEH. Due to a little bit of rust on the body it goes back to KEH. My first body is still in the shop. I beginning to think they simply don't want to repair it even though it's still under warranty.


Another body arrives from KEH also bargain grade $99. What a beautiful body. Not a flaw on it that I can see. I shoot some test rolls and everything looks great. The first shop tells me that the repairs I need don't require parts. They say to send in the body and even though it's no longer under warranty with them, they'll fix it for free. So off to the first shop it goes. A few weeks later it arrives and for a few months it works great. Then I take it to immigration march downtown and shoot ten 36 exposure rolls. Out of 360 pictures taken, less then five come out. Entire rolls were completely unexposed and others were so underexposed nothing was printable. I open the back, take off the lens and test to shutter. At all speeds above 1/60 the shutter failed to open.

Needless to say I had had enough. Three repairs in a little over a year and the damn thing still wouldn't work. So now I'm using the KEH bargain body and it's working great. The other body will eventually make it's way back to the first repair shop for spare parts.

So the moral of the story is simply that unless one knows the previous owners, there's just no telling what you're getting into. Below is a scan of one of the rolls taken during the immigration march I mentioned. It was really the only roll out of the ten that had anything remotely printable grrr!

Yes, buying used gear without warranty is definitely a gamble. I remember buying a lovely A1 - fantastic condition and my pride and joy at the time. Used it on a weekend to shoot some football and the take up sprocket broke apart!

My cousin also had an A1 at the time, and we both shopped regularly at this particular store; from memory we would have spent over $35,000 between us. When it came to being repaired, they accused me of swapping bodies with him, so that the repair could be done under my camera's warranty! (Would cost them about $500 - more than I spent on the actual camera.) Thankfully my warranty card had been filled in correctly, which showed as plain as day, that the body which was broken, was indeed the camera I was asking to be repaired.

Needless to say, I dropped the store like a hotcake and *never* shopped there again!

If you buy any gear from a store, remember the warranty card - could save you an awful lot of money and headaches should the gear ever fail you.