The Digital Photography Show #11: How to Make Money Off Your Old Equipment
The Digital Photography Show #11: How to Make Money Off Your Old Equipment (MP3 – 16MB – 45mins.)
June 24, 2006: Welcome to the exciting eleventh edition of The Digital Photography Show!
Today we have a really interesting interview with The Equipment Lady herself: Laurie Excell. Laurie was mentioned a few weeks ago by Scott Kelby in our interview with him (BTW, while talking with Laurie, I mistakenly said it was Rick Sammon, the subject of another interview, who turned us on to her. You might want to write down that I made a mistake on June 24, 2006 – it just doesn’t happen that often!).
Laurie explains how she works to sell your used camera equipment at the very best price. If you’re like me and have cameras, lenses and other goodies sitting around gathering dust, you might want to consider having The Equipment Lady turn your trash into cash.
Before that, Michael and I talk about why it’s been so long between shows. Not only was I away in Maryland looking for a new house (which we found, thank you very much) but I returned home to a disaster of almost Biblical proportions – the hard drives on both my laptop and desktop had died.
Backup, backup, backup.
Michel and I also talk about Nikon Capture NX, the incredibly intriguing software coming from a collaboration of Nikon and Nik. What might a photo editing program look like if there had never been a Photoshop to rip off? We’ll tell you all about this re-imagining of what imaging software might be.
And our wonderful listener Mary gets mentioned twice in today’s show! We’re gonna make of star of her yet!
As always, thanks for listening. Please let us know what you think of the show by leaving a comment below. And we’d be especially grateful if you’d leave a positive review on iTunes or Yahoo Podcasts. We don’t have ANY on Yahoo podcasts, yet. That makes us sad. Here’s the emoticon to prove it :(
You guys rock.
Scott
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June 25th, 2006 at 6:17 am
I’m listenting to your podcast right now, the bit about backing up. I just want to share my experience. Just last week my webserver (damn Windows machine) died in a very big way. This machine was also my email server and file server for my company. This machine was a rented, unmanaged (self managed) server at a data center.
The machine is totally dead and needs to be reformatted _IF_ it is to be saved.
The good news is that I had backups for all my websites, email files, SQL databases and files. I was able to get another server, upload all my files and be totally, 100% back in business within 24 hours. Not a bad recovery from such a total disaster.
So, as Scott says “Backup, Backup, Backup”.
BTW Scott, you MUST get an offsite solution … if your house was to burn down (I know, a horrible thought… but it does happen) and your computers burned and your backups burned you would be screwed.
I’m a little crazy about backups, here’s what I do.
1. I copy all my photos (and my Aperture library) from my desktop to my laptop almost every day. And I keep my laptop with me wherever I go.
2. I backup all my desktop files to a external firewire drive every few days. My partner knows that if the house catches fire he is to grab that drive on his way out.
3. I have ANOTHER firewire drive that I do a complete backup to once a week and I keep it in my truck at all times … so no matter where I am, I have a backup that is no more than 1 week old.
As I said, I’m a little crazy about backing up … but I’m pretty sure that I’ll never loose my data :)
June 25th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
Allen,
As I mentioned on the show, I have backup drives at home and at my office. At the end of each month I also backup my images for the month on DVDs. Tedious, I know, but it makes me feel comfortable to backup on both magnetic and optical media.
When I initially loaded up all my photos to Aperture it uncovered that some (many, but not a bulk) of the files on my firewire drives were corrupt. The same files were corrupt on the second firewire drive. These were older photos from 2002/2003. So I went back to my CD backups (before I had the dvd burner) and restored those files and imported them into Aperture. The CD backup files were all good. phew! Anyway, for me, backing up to an optical medium saved me. I have since put all my files on DVD as well as two external hard drives.
The time and money for performing backups is well worth it.
Michael GW Stein
June 27th, 2006 at 5:46 am
Hey Scott,
You were talking about the great price you found online for the 5D. Well check out http://www.royalcamera.com. I checked today and the body only is listed as $1719 plus $50 s&h. How do they sell it so low? Well they jack up the prices of all the accessories, warrenties, etc. Check it out.
June 27th, 2006 at 10:12 am
Ross, I checked out Royal Camera on Resellerratings.com, and they are the only store I ever saw that had a customer service rating of “0.” That’s not too good, dude.
Here’s a quote from one of their happy customers:
“Order was canceled. When I called to confirm they told me that the price was for the camera only! Cables, battery and everything else was extra. There’s nothing on their site to tell you that they were removing everything that came with the camera and charging you extra. Shoved the price right up to near MSRP! I felt conned to say the least. Extremely rude!”
I guess sometimes a deal that seems to be too good to be true isn’t.
June 27th, 2006 at 4:51 pm
I learned about backing up the hard way also, when my last PC crashed. One of the things I like best about the Mac is that I can back up all my data offsite to idisk which provides drag and drop password-protected storage on Apples servers. Additionally, I backup to an external drive daily and once a month I copy all my important data to DVD. I agree with Michael that the time and expense are well worth it.
June 28th, 2006 at 5:23 am
Hi Scott and Michael — as a serious amateur photographer (just bought a Nikon D50) I am really enjoying your podcasts. Keep it up. In terms of full disclosure, I am a senior executive with a public relations firm representing a data recovery firm based in Armonk, NY called CBL Data Recovery (www.cbltech.com). They deal with this kind of data loss day in and day out. Perhaps they can help you out? They work on all platforms and most media. Let me know if I can help. Many thanks. Sheldon
June 28th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
As long as this discussion has spun off into the area of customer service stories, let me relate another one to you.
This monday night (2 days ago) I placed an online order with B&H Photo for an 8GB CF Card. As I was ordering on Monday night (very late) I knew that it would not ship till Tuesday and I REALLY wanted to make sure that I had it in my greedy little hands by the weekend so I selected the UPS 2nd Day air option so I would have it Thursday.
Tuesday afternoon (about 3pm pacific time) I went online just to check the status of the order, and much to my surprise it showed the order was “processing”.
I thought this was very strange and I called them to see what the hang-up was.
The guy on the phone said that something very strange happened and several web orders including mine got kinda “stuck” on the web and didn’t properly get into thier order system.
He processed my order on the spot and upgraded me to Next Day Air service at no additional cost so that I’d still be sure to get the card by Thursday.
Somehow (even though it was after 6pm eastern time when I called) they managed to get the order out on Tuesaday night and I got the card today (Wednesday), a day earlier than I originally thought I would.
This is why B&H keeps getting my business (and lots of it!). It seems that fast, reliable service is important to them.
June 29th, 2006 at 3:58 am
I was just about ready to relate my experience with another online camera store called “Broadway Photo”, then I noticed that it’s that same company as “Royal Camera”.
STAY AWAY FROM THESE PEOPLE!!!! They are very dishonest. They actually went as far as posting fraudulent positive reciews for themseleves on resellerratings.com
Here is the email that I sent to Broadway Photo after my experience with them:
—————————————————-
I’m hoping that this email has reached someone in management, I think it’s important that you know about the experience that I had with your company today.
I was looking at the Broadway Photo ad in the June 2006 issue of Popular Photography and I noticed a Canon Powershot S3-IS camera for $299.99. I thought this price was too good to be true but hoped that maybe it was being sold at cost as a loss leader or something. So I called Broadway Photo and inquired about the camera. Here is what the sales rep told me:
1. It’s an “import model” (whatever that’s supposed to mean, Canon is a Japanese company)
2. It does not come with a warranty (however I could buy one)
3. It does not come with batteries (however I could buy some)
4. It does not come with software (however, of course, I could buy some)
5. Delivery would be about 4-5 weeks.
I did not even ask if it came with a memory card or not, but I imagine it didn’t …but I bet he would have sold me one. It seems to me that this could be considered a less than honest way of doing business, these details should have somehow been in the advertisement.
Your website says “Shop with confidence, All products we carry are factory fresh and come complete with all manufacturer supplied accessories and carry a 1 year labor, 90 day parts warranty.” This is in direct contradiction to what your sales rep told me on the phone (see notes 2,3 and 4 above).
This would have been my first purchase at Broadway Photo and probably not my last … however now I will never again consider Broadway Photo for my photography purchases..
FYI I spend many thousands of dollars a year at B&H Photo, they will continue to get my business. I’m not angry, not bitter … I just thought you should know what happened when a potential new customer came to call on your company. Thank you,
Allen Rockwell,
Allen Rockwell Photography
http://www.allenrockwellphoto.com
June 30th, 2006 at 4:48 am
I’m in the market for a tripod. Any recommendations or advice? I’d appreciate any help the group can provide.
June 30th, 2006 at 6:10 am
I’ve recently discovered your podcasts and they are great! I’ve listened to about 4 shows so far and am working my way through another one each day. You guys have created a great show with a good mixture of topics.
I’ve always wanted to get into photography. A few years ago I got my first digital camera, a Canon, and loved it. In the last few weeks I’ve purchased a Canon 350D as I’ve decided to really get into this addictive hobby! Do you have any recommendations or advice on where I should start to develop my photography skills? And what equipment would you recommend. Any advice you have for beginners would be very wlecome!
Keep up the fantastic work!
Ian
July 2nd, 2006 at 3:04 am
Hey Ian, Welcome aboard! On the next show, we’re gonna go through my Canon kit. You should get plenty of ideas from that. Mary, I’ll talk about my tripod head, too.
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:30 am
Great, looking forward to it Scott!
July 4th, 2006 at 6:23 pm
Loved the show and will definitely keep the Equip. Ladies website bookmarked. Laughed my way down the road to work on the Sunday I downloaded it into my-pod. You guys are becoming a regular thing.
To respond to some of the messages above. I also have spent several thousands of dollars with B&H and have found them to be trustworthy. The prices are not bad either. I know many people in my Nikon D70 group who have also used Adorama.
changing the subject with a request. I have a black great dane named Baby Dog and I was wondering if anyone had any tips for shooting photos of him in the sunlight at the beach. I tend to lose his eyes in his blackness. I usually use some fill light in Photoshop to fix it, not always the best results though. Is there a trick to this?
July 6th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
Denise,
Try a fill flash or a refelector, especially if the sun is up high and the eyes are deeply set.
July 9th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
Hi,
I have found something for remotely backing up. Although it doesnt provide a lot of space (currently 2742 MB and always increasing, you can get this piece of freeware at http://viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm, and then use your gmail account as a storage medium!
Tom.