Home · Register · Join Upload & Sell

Moderated by: Fred Miranda

New fredmiranda.com Mobile Site

New Feature: SMS Notification alert

New Feature: Buy & Sell Watchlist

FM Forums | Canon Forum | Join Upload & Sell

2 end

Archive 2007 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

fred mitcham
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

I've been reading up on things since I'm about to purchase my first DSLR and lens (30d 17-55) and I keep reading about people saying how they got a bad copy of a lens, or how they had to send it in for calibrating, or how it took three copies before they got a good one, or how they got a body that performed poorly or had problems and had to exchange it, etc..

Personally I find it absolutely shocking that people have to pay this much money for gear and have to suffer with this kind of hit and miss quality control.. I'm a musician and usually a companies low end gear can be hit and miss, thats why its low end gear.. but certainly not the high end equipment, afterall thats part of why it costs so much. Why are camera companies different?

Anyways, my question is, for someone who's never owned any of this kind of equipment before and has no reference point whatsoever, how do you know? How do you know if your lens is sharp enough? If the autofocus is fast enough and properly calibrated? If your body is producing pictures with proper contrast and color? Etc.. When I get my lens and body, is there a particular series of tests I could run to make sure everything is up to spec and working properly?

Jan 21, 2007 at 01:59 PM

Camm
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

i honestly think that way too many people on here are way to picky and invent the problems for themselves. (The old adage about going looking trouble - and you'll find it! comes into play)
If you take pictures and are happy with the results - everything is a-ok!

Jan 21, 2007 at 02:13 PM

thedigitalbean
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

Camm wrote:
i honestly think that way too many people on here are way to picky and invent the problems for themselves. (The old adage about going looking trouble - and you'll find it! comes into play)
If you take pictures and are happy with the results - everything is a-ok!

Completely agree, to which I will add the amount of "bad copies" of lenses and bodies is blown seriously out of proportion on the internet. The first reason can be attributed to what Camm says above, the other is the mere fact that only those who are unhappy and want to complain raise the big fuss; there is a large proportion of users out there that do not encounter any problems with their gear and they are happy.

Jan 21, 2007 at 02:38 PM

EB-1
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

fred mitcham wrote:
I'm a musician and usually a companies low end gear can be hit and miss, thats why its low end gear.. but certainly not the high end equipment, afterall thats part of why it costs so much. Why are camera companies different?

Because Canon does not care about quality beyond the minimum amount necessary to maximize their profit. It is a business after all and there is little competition at the high end. It is very annoying to find that about 20-25% of the gear has some sort of problem or another. Then even good gear can be messed up by their service department.

Keep in mind that although much of the gear is designed for professional use it is all consumer products. I think one of the only non-consumer items was the 1200/5.6. It is not like spending several hundred thousand dollars or even a million on a piece of custom lab or mfg. equipment.

Unfortunately you will find people that have a goodly amount of Canon gear with few or no complaints. Either they are lucky or not too critical or a combination of both. Trust your experience and test the equipment thoroughly within the return period. For example, is AF accurate? Are the sharpness, and CA and other optical abberations of the lens symmetrical from side to side and top to bottom? Is the exposure even, other than expected radial light falloff? Is there significant banding in the darker areas? Are there more than just a few bad pixels? Then face the realities of life such as zoom lenses may not the sharpest and contrastiest wide open in the corners.

Camera/lens shake, slow shuuter speeds, bad focus, insufficient DOF, too small apertures, etc. are user errors that can confound the issue. If you are a beginner it would be wise to buy some basic books about SLR photography and read them first.

EB

Jan 21, 2007 at 02:43 PM

Steve Torelli
Offline
• • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

EB,
Cynical or sarcastic ?

Jan 21, 2007 at 03:08 PM

EB-1
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

Some of both, but mostly the former.

Now I'm struggling with some Nikon digital issues as well.

It was a lot easier when I only had a half-dozen lenses and before digital. If a lens was not right it may have been overlooked and manual focus was always user error.

Of course I did not enlarge 135 to such sizes as today.

EB

Jan 21, 2007 at 03:15 PM

walter23
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

Personally I find it absolutely shocking that people have to pay this much money for gear and have to suffer with this kind of hit and miss quality control.. I'm a musician and usually a companies low end gear can be hit and miss, thats why its low end gear.. but certainly not the high end equipment, afterall thats part of why it costs so much. Why are camera companies different?

Because people don't blame their guitar if they can't play, but they blame their photo gear if they can't take quality photos

No, seriously, you get a false impression of the number of faults with camera gear by reading these forums. There's an inaccurate representation of the statistics because the thousands who are happy aren't talking about it, whereas the 10 that have had a problem are going to come on here and start threads about it. Order your gear, go take some real pictures (no newspapers or brick walls or focus charts), and if you have a real problem it will eventually become obvious. Most inconsistencies can be chalked up to bad technique, and I think actual problems are pretty rare. No doubt there is some copy to copy variation in quality, but that's because these things are manufactured within certain tolerances. A high quality lens will give high quality results, even if it's a so-called "bad copy". I have a 17-40L which seems to have slightly higher corner softness than some examples that I've seen (though that's a hard comparison because I don't use much sharpening on my images), and it's a fantastic lens that makes razor sharp pictures.

Jan 21, 2007 at 03:26 PM

nathanlake
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

The answer is EXPERIENCE. As you take more photos with different lens and body combinations you will learn what is good and what is not. This might be one of the greatest skills that a photographer can learn. Knowing when a shot is no good is as useful a skill as learning to operate your equipment.

Jan 21, 2007 at 03:31 PM

Monito
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

Keep in mind that the internet amplification effect in the hands of squeaky wheels makes a few bad copies seem like a huge problem, because owners of good copies rarely post that their lens is good. Also, there are more soft users than soft lenses.

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/lens_defect_survey.html

Jan 21, 2007 at 03:36 PM

jfulton
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

I believe you'd know it when you come across it. If you performance is to your liking, I'd say you're probably in the clear. However, if something is so off, like constant way out of focus shots from the same lens/body combo, then I'd investigate further. Every camera and lens produced will likely not be a carbon copy of its peers. Variation will exist to some degree, naturally.

Jan 21, 2007 at 03:37 PM

Phast1
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

"How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?"

If you don't know already - then you don't have a bad copy.
I have only once had what would be termed a bad copy in some very many buys/sells of lenses. After canon service it was fine.

Actually most of my super keeper-shots were done by careful (and lucky) composition and not evaluated by sharpness

Jan 21, 2007 at 03:49 PM

EltonTeng
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

Bad lens reports seem to fall into the following groups of problems. I'm sure there are more out there.

1. Soft when shooting at wide-opened apertures (often 2.8 or greater.) Subject appears to be OOF or having low contrast. Low contrast (yet not OOF) is a problem especially when your Av is @ F2 or larger. This is easily corrected with a little sharpening (i.e. edge contrast enhancement.) The next question is shouldn't CAnon be able to produce clean contrast at wide open Av's? Maybe.
The OOF issue is a problem because DOF is really thin at the large Av and any slight subject movement or camera shake causes your subject to be OOF. Thin DOF and real life 3D subjects gives you a false OOF impression.

2. Soft when shooting under low light situations. Low light settings are in low contrast in nature so you have AF hunting issues in addition to OOF issues. You would shoot with wide open Av under low light situations so you add to the problem stated above.

3. Lens tests that ask for the camera to pick out the correct mark out of several that are set 1 mm apart from each other. These tests are often conducted in somebodies den or living room under low light with wide open apertures. The camera/lens combo fails the test if the AF point lights up 2 mm away from the target.

4. Lens is asked to pick out the correct subject under infinity focus settings 50m away in a wide field, then blown up to 100% crop to scrutinize.

5. User technique issues confound all of the above situations, e.g. Tv @ 1/50 on a 200mm lens.

Are there bad lenses out there? Yes. Is it a wide spread problem? I don't know. Could it be that the same bad NIB lens is passed from one buyer to the next from the same vendors? Possibly. I haven't had any problems yet out of my N of 8.

Test your lens on real life subjects - people, dog, etc, under reasonable conditions, and eliminate user issues. If you have a bad lens then send it in to calibrate or exchange.

Jan 21, 2007 at 03:53 PM

Brutus_B
Offline
[X]

p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

fred mitcham wrote:
I've been reading up on things since I'm about to purchase my first DSLR and lens (30d 17-55) and I keep reading about people saying how they got a bad copy of a lens, or how they had to send it in for calibrating, or how it took three copies before they got a good one, or how they got a body that performed poorly or had problems and had to exchange it, etc..

Anyways, my question is, for someone who's never owned any of this kind of equipment before and has no reference point whatsoever, how do you know?...Show more →

Well, main problem I have with your putting so much stock into various other peoples claims of all the defects, bad copies, is that how do you know these people complaining have the slighest clue what to look for as well

When someone else has never owned such gear before, and they come bitching up a storm about how they spent so much money on such and such lens, and its not a better performer than their point and shoot which was 1/10th, is it really wise to think that Canon makes bad gear ?

Unless theres some really really freaky odds going on, I personally find it very very intresting that dispite owning about 12 canon bodies and over 30 EF lenses in my time shooting Canon, I havent had any of this QC troubles.

Do they happen ? Yes, they happen with any product, but when it seems those with little to no experience seem to get all the "bad copies" "soft leneses" and so forth it makes you wonder doesnt it ?

Maybe that soft lens Joe Snapshot is whining about is only soft because he's not smart enough to know that you cant take a sharp shot at 200mm at 1/10th a second handheld.

Maybe someones complains about the AF being off is just because they've never shot sports before and are comparin their stuff to SI photogs who have been doing it 20 years

Maybe someons "bad color" is because they are using a cheap LCD and have no idea how to post process and they are comparing the results of master photographers who could write instruction books on photoshop if they wanted to.

maybe that "poor contrast" is because someone is shooting into the sun, or doenst use a lens hood ?

Jan 21, 2007 at 05:29 PM

EltonTeng
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

Brutus_B wrote:
Maybe someons "bad color" is because they are using a cheap LCD and have no idea how to post process and they are comparing the results of master photographers who could write instruction books on photoshop if they wanted to.

maybe that "poor contrast" is because someone is shooting into the sun, or doenst use a lens hood ?

Or poor contrast because they are shooting in darkness....

Jan 21, 2007 at 06:08 PM

Monito
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

EB-1 wrote:
Because Canon does not care about quality beyond the minimum amount necessary to maximize their profit.

This is true as far as it is stated, but it is blown completely out of proportion by the sour grapes of the rest of the post. The poster forgets that Canon is in this for the long haul. They are a 70 year old company and Japanese companies like Canon do not look only at the last 90 days. They are vitally interested in maintaining a high level of reputation and would have gone out of business if they were devoted to short term profits. The fact of the matter is that Canon has generated a deep and broad level of loyalty from their users and they didn't do it by ramming crap down people's throats, as some would have us believe.

EB-1 wrote:
It is a business after all and there is little competition at the high end.

Wrong. There is competition from Nikon and Leica and Hasselblad and Leaf and Mamiya and several others. There is even more competition in the mid-range, and competition in the low end is fierce.

EB-1 wrote:
It is very annoying to find that about 20-25% of the gear has some sort of problem or another.

Not to pick on EB-1 (because he is only representative of a group of people), but I think that such users might be less apt to complain about their equipment if they sold all their gear and bought into another company that gives them more satisfaction. If they don't sell all their gear, it is probably because they expect to get less satisfaction from the competition, or because they don't want to pay what it would take to get up to the level they want. Each year a few do sell all their Canon gear and find happiness with the competition, especially if they move up to the level where they are paying double or triple for higher quality. The internet amplification effect gives the greatest prominence to the squeaky wheels with unreasonable expectations and eternally suspicious minds.

EB-1 wrote:
Keep in mind that although much of the gear is designed for professional use it is all consumer products.

Even if that were true, it wouldn't condemn it.

EB-1 wrote:
Unfortunately you will find people that have a goodly amount of Canon gear with few or no complaints.

This is not unfortunate. Only a sourpuss or "gloomy gus" would find this "unfortunate". They find this unfortunate since it is evidence against their unhappy conclusions.

EB-1 wrote:
Either they are lucky or not too critical or a combination of both.

Determining "quality" is difficult and is made even more so because lenses are complex instruments and there are many measures of their quality. Those measures are continuously variable (mathematically speaking), meaning that (to pick one for example) contrast can vary from 100 to 0 on some scale and take any value in between. A cutoff threshold has to be chosen so that if contrast falls below it, the lens is deemed "defective". This is complicated, because a lens that passed all these thresholds would still be deemed defective if it was borderline in too many of them. However, there is some definitive set of criteria that could be established such that a proper level of quality assurance is achieved. In doing so, the manufacturer improves the manufacturing process until only some small percentage are rejected by quality control, maybe in the range of 0.5 to 3 percent.

This is all with the background of the design objectives and the pricing for the market.

Some people are extremely critical and would want to move the goalposts to a higher level of quality. That is a valid position, but only if the background is adjusted. In other words, those critical people should be prepared to pay more, much more. What is truly unfortunate is that they rarely are willing.

If the contrast threshold is say 90 out of 100, with lower measures rejected, then that may not satisfy highly critical users. They may reject a lens below 93 or 95. Another manufacturer may make lenses that meet the higher threshold with the same rate of defects (according to the higher level) creeping through, but the cost would be double or triple.

If you make 200,000 lenses and sell them to 100,000 people, some people will buy one, others two, etc. and some will buy seven or more. The people who buy seven are more likely to run into a "defect" than the people who buy one. This is exacerbated by the fact that the people who buy seven are usually more discerning and critical to begin with.

It is often easier for critical people to complain about perceived "quality problems" than pay the double or triple appropriate for the quality level they seek. It is more comfort to one's ego to say "I'm a very careful and sharp tester of quality" than it is to say "I'm not capable of affording the really high quality system".

I wrote a Monte Carlo simulation, assuming Canon makes 1 million lenses in a year (probably higher), so ten years would be 10 million lenses. I assumed that in that decade, 84.2% of the owners would own a single lens (came with the camera), 8% two lenses, 4% three, 2% four, 1% five, 0.5% six, and 0.3% would own seven lenses. I assumed that I assumed a "defect rate" discovered by the public at 3 percent (not real defects that slip through QA, but lenses that are deemed by the user as "defective" for whatever reason). Here is a typical run:

Owners with 1 lenses: 6462010; 0 defects: 6267648; 1 defects: 194362
Owners with 2 lenses: 613967; 0 defects: 577555; 1 defects: 35848; 2 defects: 564
Owners with 3 lenses: 306983; 0 defects: 280266; 1 defects: 25886; 2 defects: 823; 3 defects: 8
Owners with 4 lenses: 153491; 0 defects: 135892; 1 defects: 16722; 2 defects: 853; 3 defects: 24; 4 defects: 0
Owners with 5 lenses: 76745; 0 defects: 66003; 1 defects: 10096; 2 defects: 629; 3 defects: 17; 4 defects: 0; 5 defects: 0
Owners with 6 lenses: 38372; 0 defects: 31856; 1 defects: 6009; 2 defects: 494; 3 defects: 13; 4 defects: 0; 5 defects: 0; 6 defects: 0
Owners with 7 lenses: 23023; 0 defects: 18624; 1 defects: 4017; 2 defects: 359; 3 defects: 23; 4 defects: 0; 5 defects: 0; 6 defects: 0; 7 defects: 0

So you can see that chances are there are 359 owners with six lenses experiencing a 28% defect rate (2/7) and 23 with a 42% defect rate (3/7). Owners of six lenses: 494 at a defect rate of 33% (2/6) and 13 at 50% (3/6). Owners of five lenses: 629 at 40% (2/5), 17 at 60% (3/5). Owners of four lenses: 853 at 50% and 24 at 75%. So that is a total 2412 people experiencing a defect rate of greater than the 20-25% previously mentioned. 2412 potential squeaky wheels to get on the internet and complain vociferously and frequently about lenses.

The numbers are likely higher because chances are the percentage who own a single lens is lower and the other percentages should be adjusted higher. The actual defect rate (as "detected" by the users) may be a bit higher due to incompetent owners who only own one lens and due to fussy owners with multiple lenses who are expecting Zeiss quality at Canon prices.

Here is the code of the program for inspection:

static final double [] FractionOwning =
{0.842, 0.080, 0.040, 0.020, 0.010, 0.005, 0.003};
static final double DefectRate = 0.03;

static public void main (String [] args) {
int numLenses = 10 * 1000 * 1000; // Ten million.
int maxOwn = FractionOwning.length;
int numBins = maxOwn;
double [] FractionBins = new double [numBins];
int [] numLensesInBin = new int [numBins];
int [] numOwners = new int [numBins];
int maxDefectBins = numBins + 1;
int [][] ownersWithDefects = new int [numBins][maxDefectBins];
for (int a = 0; a < numBins; a++) {
for (int j = 0; j < maxDefectBins; j++) {
ownersWithDefects [a][j] = 0;
}
}
double sum = 0.0;
for (int a = 0; a < numBins; a++) {
FractionBins [a] = FractionOwning [a] * (double) (a + 1);
sum += FractionBins [a];
}
for (int a = 0; a < numBins; a++) {
FractionBins [a] = FractionBins [a] / sum;
numLensesInBin [a] = (int) (FractionBins [a] * (double) numLenses);
numOwners [a] = numLensesInBin [a] / (a + 1);
}
String s = "Bins: ";
for (int a = 0; a < numBins; a++) {
if (a != 0)
s += "; ";
s += FractionBins [a];
for (int j = 0; j < numOwners [a]; j++) {
int defects = 0;
for (int k = 0; k < (a + 1); k++) {
if (Math.random () <= DefectRate) {
defects++;
}
}
ownersWithDefects [a][defects]++;
}
}
System.out.println (s);
for (int a = 0; a < numBins; a++) {
s = "Owners with " + (a+1) + " lenses: " + numOwners [a];
for (int j = 0; j < (a+2); j++) {
// ex. own one lens can have 0 or 1 defect.
s += "; " + j + " defects: " + ownersWithDefects [a][j];
}
System.out.println (s);
}
} /* main (String []) */

Jan 21, 2007 at 09:31 PM

Roy Pertchik
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

I have had 8 or 9 Canon lenses pass through my ownership in the last 3 years. All bought new from reputable dealers. I have had three that were absolutely unacceptable to me. (I was able to get them exchanged or repaired under warrantee in every case.) Thing is, I am surprised to hear you don't think musicians are the same way about their equipment. I know sax players who search through Selmer after Selmer, looking for a good copy, and piano players who test and try lots and lots of Steinways. I have never met a guitar player who didn't have a favorite axe that he found only after trying lots of, what might appear to the novice, identical instruments, ie. 10 different identical Les Paul's or a whole bunch of Martins. About camera gear, if your a serious user, you expect these very precision systems to operate at absolute peak performance, and we push things to the edge, sometimes on every shot, looking for maximum sharpness in the center of a super blurry background, demanding incredible performance at a very wide aperture, or an eagle in flight at several hundred yards, demanding massively fast exposure and acuratre focus tracking, etc., etc.,
Now, cameras and, even more so, lenses are not computer programs. They are man made physical objects, built to tolerances, and they perform in the real world according to where they happen to fall on a bell curve around the range of those tolerances. Just like one hundred lovely hand made silver flutes will feel and sound different to an experienced player, lenses have some variation. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that a good photographer can "feel" the subtle differences between lenses as a musician can feel the particulars of an instrument. But I am saying that there simply have to be physical, measurable performance differences between what are, after all, physical mechanisms. Now, most consumers, and probably most "pros", are completely satisfied with their equipment, unless there is an absolute clunker, of course, but within a normal range, they are all pretty great these days. But on a forum like this, as others have pointed out, you will read dozens and dozens of complaints from the passionate enthusiasts and pros who just simply want to make sure their copy is on a favorable part of the bell curve, so to speak.
Bottom line is, take pictures. Learn. If you eventually feel your equipment is holding you back, it will be a sign of your progress. After all, a 5 year old beginner can't tell squat about a Stradivarius vs. a school orchestra rental, but after playing and studying a few years, maybe it will start to make a difference.

Jan 21, 2007 at 11:28 PM

wtlloyd
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: On

p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

Most lenses are better than most photographers.

That's a quote, and it's true.

I don't think it's credible to state that 20% to 25% of Canon's products are defective.

There are only two USA Factory Service Centers, and they seem to handle the workload easily. Think about it.

Jan 22, 2007 at 12:09 AM

fred mitcham
Offline
•
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

RoyPertchi wrote:
I have had 8 or 9 Canon lenses pass through my ownership in the last 3 years. All bought new from reputable dealers. I have had three that were absolutely unacceptable to me. (I was able to get them exchanged or repaired under warrantee in every case.) Thing is, I am surprised to hear you don't think musicians are the same way about their equipment. I know sax players who search through Selmer after Selmer, looking for a good copy, and piano players who test and try lots and lots of Steinways. I have never met a guitar player who didn't have a favorite axe that he found only after trying lots of, what might appear to the novice, identical instruments, ie. 10 different identical Les Paul's or a whole bunch of Martins. About camera gear, if your a serious user, you expect these very precision systems to operate at absolute peak performance, and we push things to the edge, sometimes on every shot, looking for maximum sharpness in the center of a super blurry background, demanding incredible performance at a very wide aperture, or an eagle in flight at several hundred yards, demanding massively fast exposure and acuratre focus tracking, etc., etc.,
Now, cameras and, even more so, lenses are not computer programs. They are man made physical objects, built to tolerances, and they perform in the real world according to where they happen to fall on a bell curve around the range of those tolerances. Just like one hundred lovely hand made silver flutes will feel and sound different to an experienced player, lenses have some variation. Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that a good photographer can "feel" the subtle differences between lenses as a musician can feel the particulars of an instrument. But I am saying that there simply have to be physical, measurable performance differences between what are, after all, physical mechanisms. Now, most consumers, and probably most "pros", are completely satisfied with their equipment, unless there is an absolute clunker, of course, but within a normal range, they are all pretty great these days. But on a forum like this, as others have pointed out, you will read dozens and dozens of complaints from the passionate enthusiasts and pros who just simply want to make sure their copy is on a favorable part of the bell curve, so to speak.
Bottom line is, take pictures. Learn. If you eventually feel your equipment is holding you back, it will be a sign of your progress. After all, a 5 year old beginner can't tell squat about a Stradivarius vs. a school orchestra rental, but after playing and studying a few years, maybe it will start to make a difference.

...Show more →

high end instruments vary from one copy to the next but one isn't better than another, they're just different, not defective. tones differ and musicians have their personal preferences.. but you'll never find a $2000 les paul with a crooked neck, thats not a subtle nuance, thats a defect. what was wrong with the 3 lenses you bought that were unnacceptable?

i am buying gear that i can grow into to avoid playing the upgrade game a year later. i'd rather not spend two grand only to realize twelve months down the line that i paid a fortune for substandard equipment that is now out of warranty. thats why i asked if there are some simple things i can do when i get my gear to test it since canon's quality control appears to be less than stellar.

Jan 22, 2007 at 12:58 AM

Monito
Offline
• • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

fred mitcham wrote:
since canon's quality control appears to be less than stellar.

Canon's quality control is as good or better than other manufacturers unless you want to pay triple for Leica.

http://www.bobatkins.com/photography/lens_defect_survey.html

However, even Leica has had quality control problems and users are not always satisfied with the product, viz. their latest digital rangefinder camera.

Jan 22, 2007 at 02:23 AM

abam
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off

p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · How do you know if you got a bad body/lens?

"Keep in mind that although much of the gear is designed for professional use it is all consumer products."

i've waited two years (length of my FM membership) for someone to say this.

Jan 22, 2007 at 02:47 AM

1 2 end
FM Forums \| Canon Forum \| Join Upload & Sell 1 2 end

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.