Recommended suppliers of equipment

Hi Don,

I hope I'm in time with some good info on where to shop in Canada.
Number one is www.thecamerastore.com. I mentioned in one of my previous messages that the 16-45mm DA is C$380. Add 6% sales tax and it's C$403 or GBP190. Shipping within Canada is C$10.

For you overseas crowd , I spoke to one of the sales reps and asked about overseas customers. They will accept money orders (cashiers checks). For shipping you will have to provide a FedEx account number, and as usual, import duties are all your own to pay . Having looked at this though it appears that goods will still be much cheaper than buying in the UK. Check it out.

Others include www.dunneandrundle.com, www.kerrisdalecameras.com, and www.futureshop.ca. Future Shop will do a price match if you provide evidence of a lower price.

Happy shopping and don't break the bank, or your wife'll break your ...

I have issues with future shop and based on personal experiance, never do business with them.....thier flyer is usefull when shopping with other vendors who will price match, such as Staples and London Drugs.
I have found my student card useful at the university of manitoba.
ie:
photoshop suite cs $399.00
Apple aperture $139.00
Macally 250gig firewire hds $119.00

going back to school is good!

I'm with you Don. I have two experiences where they did not have the goods as advertised but promised to call me if any are located. Miraculously both times I got a call on the day after the sale but unfortunately...not available for the sale price. I think that is after all why they call it FUTURE Shop, I can't seem to buy anything on sale in the present. I don't even bother reading their flyers anymore.

Drew

Hi, i'm new even i read from long time

A couple of day ago i opened a 3d like this on italian pentax forum

Then i received a warning from the forum admn. do not post any foreign shops link because we are also selling Pentax equipement in Italy

It's quite simply unbeliveble, i posted those links to help somebody to buy more pentax lens, i don't care where they gonna buy Pentax but buy and enjoy

In Italy it's hard to find Pentax and expensive more than anywhere else

Lucky to live in UK

As far as I'm concerned, if your store or outlet is great regarding price and customer service, then you deserve to have your link posted all over the internet. Only inferior retailers have any reason to fear competition. These guys try to prevent the existence of better stores from becoming public knowledge. Often, it's not the price that keeps a customer coming back repeatedly, unless of course it's a make or break price difference.

A good place for memory cards www.picstop.co.uk.

Cheapest branded cards I have found. Sandisc extreme III 1Gb £23.50,
you also get a copy of Capture One LE with any extreme III card.

This offer is limited, so you need to check first.


Rick

I cannot recommend Nicholas. You said you look at his site. Be sure that is all you do!

Never has any of the stock he advertises, the classic line about it being stored in an offsite warehouse is pure BS = "just a moment while I go and buy it from another dealer". Complete & utter rogue!

"Our vast stocks of used equipment are the envy of the trade and the source of pleasure to our numerous customers worldwide. " PSML

Hiya,

Here is a true story about a camera shop. All UK forum members, read it and see if you can guess who it is..I have not exaggerated one little bit, this is just as I found things one afternoon about 8 months ago..

I had seen their ads in AP for ages and so much great old stuff was advertised I finally went out of my way to find the shop. When I found it, I was somewhat surprised. It was a very old and shaggy victorian shop front, very small and had not beed painted since about the 12th century.

There was a small 4 foot wide window either side of the door. I looked in the left hand side one. There were about 4 or 5 tatty chipboard shelves with cameras and lenses liberally scattered about. There were no prices and all the items were covered in about 5mm of thick BLACK dust. It looked like no one had cleaned the shop for quite literally years.

I then looked inside. There was an old lady about 60 serving an old guy and another assistant standing behind the counter..it was about 3pm in the afternoon and she was eating chinese takeout from the silver tray they come in.

The floor area in the shop was about 10 feet wide and about 15 feet long, trouble is there was a mountain of camera gear, boxes and general rubbish piled up on the floor. This pile was about 3-4 feet high and was taking up about three quarters of the floor area. There was only a narrow corridor of floor left directly in front of the counter which was about 18 inches wide. Had there been a fire, people would have had difficulty evacuating.

On the counter and on many shelves behind the counter were countless cameras, lenses and all manner of gear just piled up on top of each other and just scattered everywhere..it looked just like a jumble sale.

I was absolutely shocked that in the year 2006, a shop, especially one who sells technical equipment, which needs storing properly, should be in such a complete shambles. I would suggest the owner has no cleaning going on at all in the shop and also in my opinion has a complete disregard for health and safety.

I shudder to think what state the cameras and lenses are in which 'inhabit' this joke of a shop.

........the shop is called Nicholas. I have spoken to several camera buyers in London since and all have said this retailer has a shocking reputation...this does not surprise me one little bit..

The really bad thing in my opinion is that Amateur Photographer magazine are every week advertising this shambles.

cheers Steve.M.

I suppose, to twist an old adage "You can never tell a shop by its website"

Didn't you get a photo of it? Sounds like it'd make a great image
Matt

The only experience I have of this shop was that I saw on their website they had (have?) a couple of lenses I was interested in (March this year, and I'd already seen it some months before listed there). I emailed them and asked if it was still available:

"Could you please let me know what your best price would be for the S/H Sigma 70-210EX in Pentax AF mount, that is listed on your website. Also your best price, including delivery, for the Tokina 80-200 2.8"

No response. So a few weeks later I tried again:

"I see from your website that you still have the below items listed - if you let me know the prices of them, I might just buy one.

Your soonest response would be appreciated."

Again, no response. Don't know whether they've got them or not, but from Steve's description, I'm certainly not going to bother to find out. Nearly did make the journey up to Camden to see a few months back - glad I didn't (although it sounds like it might be worth it, just for a laugh )

Actually, now I come to think of it, I did ring them once, spoke to a guy there to ask the price of something (one of the worst 'crimes' for adverts in my view - "price: ASK" ), he just laughed when I said it was more than I was expecting. Got the impression then that they weren't the most helpful lot.

Dan

Hi Matt,

I used to visit friends in London every year three or four times and found London quite tiring enough without carrying camera gear around, so I did not have a camera with me.

However I shall be returning fairly soon and may well take a return trip to this photo den of doom. If I do, I will take a camera and capture whatever I can. It was so disgustingly dirty last time I did not want to get too close. This is why I never took my life in my hands and went inside last time...I was scared of getting buried under all the 'rubble' inside.

cheers..

I too have been inside this shop, not too far from Mornington Cresent tube... I just dropped in there on the off-chance after having been up early taking pics in London one Sat morning. I'd sat reading AP in the car waiting for the light and spotted they had one of the 67 shift lenses that I'd been looking to find for ages... Steve's description is spot on and their ad seems to be total fantasy... They "could" have all of the items on this list but I have no idea how they'd find a particular item or what state it would be in. To be fair I have no idea how they manage to do any trade what-so-ever... God only knows how they even manage to sell enough to pay for the AP ads???

Think I spent more 10x more time finding a parking space than I did in the shop!

Will

Thank you to Chris of SRS Microsystems for ultra fast delivery of Pentax DLI50 batteries. Much appreciated.

And thanks to The Camera Store of Calgary for fast delivery and a cheap K10D (480 pounds including tax and shipping),

Hi,
I've used quite a few mail, telephone and internet order sites, and can recommend the following wholeheartedly, and several others I can't remember:

For adapters and filters, including custom adapters SRB Film; http://www.srbfilm.co.uk/index1.html
also
http://www.speedgraphic.co.uk/page.asp?p=30001&1=Home%2BPage http://www.cameraworld.co.uk/ http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/default.php?cPath=777

SRB were really good when I phoned and explained that I couldn't use the adapter I'd ordered, so they analysed what my problem was, and sent me a different adapter part. It arrived before they'd got the original back. It was mostly my fault, as I didn't understand how the adapter fitted until I'd received it.