Ebay Sale Good?

Hi, I am a newbie here at The Photo Forum. I just finished my photography class in the summer using 35 and 120mm film. I like to take lots of pictures and film is just too slow for me. I've used a Canon Rebel for a short while and it was pretty good but when I went to the camera shop, I fell in love with the Canon 30D. I've done lots of research and think it would be a great camera for me to start with and will last me for a while.

I looked on Ebay and found a kit including many lenses and accessories and was wondering if it would be a good deal to get. To me the price seems reasonable. I also talked to a few people who have purchased the same kit and said they would purchase with this dealer again in a heartbeat. I would like your input of the kit and the price.

EDIT: Sorry but here is the site.

http://cgi.ebay.com …43454QQrdZ1QQcm​dZViewItem

Welcome to POTN!! In order for us to help, we'd need to see the actual ebay sale, or at the very least a list of all the lenses and whatnot. As a general rule however, A. you don't need or want half the crap in those "packages" and B. what you do want is generally overpriced. A good rule of thumb is to check the prices against known, good camera websites like http://www.bhphotovide​o.com/
http://www.adorama.com​/
http://beachcamera.com​/shop/home.aspx
http://www.bluestripep​hoto.com/catalog/

I would also suggest to not really buy from any sites other than the known good ones, especially if they are located in Brooklyn, there are a number of bait and switch scams going on there. Feel free to read thru everything and ask questions when they come up, once again, welcome.

Sorry, updated with the site.

Right now EBAY is a sellers market. You can sometimes get a good deal. I'd say you'd be better off with buying through www.bhphotovideo.com

Ok. I did a search. It seems to be an ebay only shop. I can't pull up anything on the web from their freephone number.

They're giving you two not-too great lenses and a mediocre lens. The name on the tripod is not visible and the table-top tripod just ain't good enough for anything other than a compact camera.

I'd steer clear of this - there's too much included in this "wonderful offer" for it to be genuine.

The general rule of thumb with ebay is that if it costs more than $10 it's probably fraudulant. Ebay is where you dump your secondhand stuff - not where you buy brand new gear.

Try KEH.com if you want reasonable prices (and check out their secondhand deals too - I had some nice secondhand lenses from them).

If I were you then I'd look at the 30D with a Sigma 18-50 and a Sigma 50-150.

I would not touch the microdrive they are bundling with it. Instead I would buy a 1, 2 or 4 gigabyte compact flash card. A 1GB card will give you 117 RAW shots or 284 JPEGs. That's plenty to start off with. If you need more then 1GB cards go for between $15 and $30. Unless you're doing sport then you do not need a fast card.

mdm wrote:
Right now EBAY is a sellers market. You can sometimes get a good deal. I'd say you'd be better off with buying through www.bhphotovideo.com

And what exactly is a "seller's market"? My wife is having a ton of difficulty offloading some bargains she bought to offload for more realistic prices on ebay.

That kit is pretty much crap, check out all those on b&h and you'll see you're being taken for a ride. the "wide angle lens kit" is just a screw on filter that doesn't work much at all for dSLRs. the other filters i'm sure are low price, lower quality. None of the lenses are really that great, the 70-300 and 28-135 are decent, but the kit lens (18-55mm) is not really good at all. It's all cheap stuff being horribly marked up. B&H is the way to go according to most on here, they treated me right.

Those lenses are ok at best. One clue as to how great of a deal it's NOT is the fact that they show the kit lens as having a $300 value. Which is does not. It's available with digital camera bodies for less than $100 over the body-only price. NO ONE sells that lens for $300. Not even by itself.

A lot of the eBay camera kit sellers do that. They show extravagant (false) value prices for individual pieces so that the person who doesn't do his or her homework thinks it's a super deal after adding up those prices.

Well, as far as Canon lens, I'd say most are selling close to new prices.

"Saving" money by buying a kit like this never works because you'll end up with gear that has NO value to YOU. You say you "fell in love" with the 30D at the `camera store. Buy the body and a decent starter lens (my first was the 28-105) and then see what you "fall in love with" next. The cr@p in this kit doesn't belong in the bag with your cool new 30D.

Looking at Ritz (not a cheap place)
The 30D and 18-55 is $1500
The 30D body only is $1400

The lenses:
28-135 is $520
70-300 is $650 (for the IS)

While on the surface it doesn't look too badly priced in comparison to Ritz prices, you should check B&H prices and KEH prices.

Personally I would not recommend the Canon lenses listed. Instead I would suggest you defined the kinds of photography you will be doing not the kinds you think you might do and we can suggest better alernatives.

Agreed. If you don't have much of an idea what you'll be doing then the 30D and a Sigma 18-125 are all you should need until you have a better idea of what you will be doing.

another vote for bhphoto.com

ok, so there is an option on the B&H site. I've purchased stuff there for film photo, and a pretty good site to work with. I could add in a little extra to get the 17-85mm lens, instead of the kit lens. now would it be a better to get the 17-85mm, and not the kit lens?

Kit lens
http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …EG&addedTroughT​ype=search

17-85mm
http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …EG&addedTroughT​ype=search

The 17-85 is better than the kit lens but opinion seems divided over its quality.