Whilst i dont mind the cost of a camera body or a good quality lens i feel that a lot of the other stuff we need is over priced , have you paid for anything but felt as though you were being ripped off. Here are 2 examples 1..... i bought a tripod and wanted an extra shoe for a quick change over , it is a 40mm piece of hard plastic with a small screw thread and a D ring ..... £25 i did not buy it but emailed the company to ask how they could justify the price. The guy who replied gave a blow by blow account from it being made to me getting it. The email in my thunderbird inbox was so long i had to scroll it to read it all , it was obvious he was making fun of me. 2. I wanted a veiwfinder to fit over the camera screen , i saw 1 on amazon it is blue and is being marketed by about 6 different companies , all using the same photos but the price varies from £17 to over £50. The one i eventually got did indeed cost me £50 ( not the blue one ) , i bought it on the strength of recommendations , all i got for my £50 was a rubber cone with an eye piece and a chord on it .
Keith, I usually buy second hand and a lot of stuff from China through Ebay. When you said tripod shoe, I know this as a accessory plate and paid 25 dollars. for two of them.
40mm hard plastic? you sure thats not the alloy / aluminium one? is it this? they around £6 on ebay in uk, (cheaper from china but it looks like you in the uk and its only £2 cheaper, saying that the speedpak stuff from china comes pretty quick) i usually get the 70mm, 100mm or longer, i have a ton of them, the 100mm ones are £7 on ebay from uk, these allow for some balancing being a bit longer, they also wont miss the clamps on longer pu clamps on different tipods with a longer clamp base, my 40mm ones are too short, hence 100mm or 70mm i'd love to see that email for sure there is alot of overpriced gear out there, you need to look around and see what different vendors and platforms are selling for. the other thing you need to be very careful of is not buying the cheapest crap because that could cost you your camera or lens i bought a neewer brand ef extension tube when i first started out, it had the electrics in it and it worked fine but what no one had ever said was cheap extension tubes can break apart under the weight of heavier lenses, well that is what this one done, i got super lucky and it broke while the camera and lens were on the table down loading images so if alot of people tell you for a given item "oh you better off getting the genuine one" do some research, they might know from experience
