Expressions » Archives » Scotland Diary: The conclusion

Some of you have noticed the Scotland Diary having stopped after just 4 days. Before plunging into deeper explanations, let me give you the Executive Summary:

It makes zero sense to buy your camera gear from Estonia so stop doing that!
Scotland is a breathtakingly beautiful place
Never ever go out without a spare camera body
Cromasaig B&B run by Liz & Tom has the best conditions for wildlife watching in the world
Manfrotto tripods are crap
Sigma lenses are crap

Right. Now, let’s get on with the deep dive.

Technical equipment

At first, everything was quite fine. Then one of the legs of my Manfrotto tripod (055MF3) broke. The end of one leg popped off hiding the section when I pushed it in. Luckily the day was almost over and with a little bit of wrestling the leg came out again. The stopper that’s supposed to prevent the leg section from detaching itself from the tripod completely was broken, though, so out went an order for a GT3531S to Speed Graphic, we had dinner and went to bed. The next day things got worse.

Firstly, the second leg of my tripod did the same thing as its brother. Which is rather annoying because it’s about two years old and I watched a battle-worn Gitzo aluminum tripod from 2001 perform flawlessly (and be more stable). Then, my 1D Mark III started to act up showing Error 99 messages instructing to turn the camera off and/or remove the battery. After doing that a couple of times, the message disappeared and shooting was resumed. Until the Sigma 28-70 f/2.8 lens focusing ring got stuck rendering it useless. I had had the same kind of trouble with the lens before and had it fixed but this seemed more problematic. While others took pictures of a spectacular (and apparently dangerous) waterfall, I sat there until a fabulous rainbow appeared over Loch Maree and I had to have another go. Success! With application of brute force the focusing of the Sigma lens came unstuck (still no focus close than 5 meters but that’s ok), I metered, composed and saw an error 99. Which did not go away. Until I got an advice that it could be down to the damp lens contacts. I cleaned them and sure enough, the camera started working. Dinner, bed, life was good.

The next day error 99 reappeared and did not go away whatever we did. Finally we tracked the issue down to the mirror stuck in lowered position (how was replacing the battery as instructed by the error message supposed to help it?) by attempting a sensor clean. Niell graciously offered me to use his Nikon D3. It’s a brilliant camera, in some ways much more usable than the Canon but it was still alien, it was somebody else’s and that somebody depended on it for earning his living. Not a good combination with ferocious wind, rain and sand. So I refused the offer after a couple of frames in the most polite way I could come up with and spent the rest of the day collecting clamshells and stones while carrying Niells tripod.

The next day was Monday so even before breakfast out went a call to Overall in a sure hope they would help. After all, I had spent a considerable amount of money on a professional piece of equipment. I imagined it would go something like this: “We are sorry that the equipment we sold you let you down in that most unsuitable of moments. We can’t do anything from here but if you give us your credit card details we’ll rent you a replacement body and you can send yours to us with the same courier that should be there in less than 24 hours and we’ll sort it all out when you get back, OK? ” Well, it was nothing like this. This is what I heard in order of appearance:

It’s a known problem (!? why the heck have you not noticed me or done a recall or something?)
We can’t do anything, contact the closest Canon dealer (the closest Canon dealer to northern Scotland is in Dublin, thank you)
How can we know you didn’t drop the camera in the water or something? Why should we trust you? (yes, I bought a 1D just so I can rob you, not because it’s supposed to be infallible)

At which point I hung up. Needless to say, the morale was completely gone and as I couldn’t have taken the climb the rest of the group was going to that day (my bad knee had suffered through a previous one) the day was spent watching movies and playing Nethack. Which wasn’t that bad, really.

Anyway, it was pointless to hung about so with the gracious help from SAS (the only company that did not fail me during this adventure, thanks!) I came home and went to Overall this morning. Their reaction was:

Oh, so your problem is that you can’t clean your sensor?
Right, I can’t tell you when it will be fixed, but here, this is the number of the mechanic who’s working on it
A replacement body? We don’t do that, you have to talk to the sales department right next door (even Pentax gievs you a replacement in Estonia)

Need I say more? It got more interesting when I checked my inbox. Apparently Speed Graphics woke up on Monday (the order was placed on Friday) and decided that they needed more money from me than originally anticipated so they sent me an e-mail instead of the tripod. Which I of course didn’t get to in time because Doubletree in Aberdeen do not have wifi. They were all nice and gracious but seriously, if you advertise overnight delivery and I order overnight delivery then I do not mean “if it’s Friday we deal with your request at some point on Monday and we can’t calculate delivery charges properly so you will get your stuff whenever we are done e-mailing”. So I went down to Photopoint and picked up the sole GT3531S they had in stock.

Scotland

It’s simply fabulous, no words can describe it. With a little bit of rain the moor lights up in glorious colours I never thought possible. Reds, greens, yellows, gray, blue, purple, it’s all there. Fabulous.

A separate section should be dedicated to the people of Scotland. Firstly Liz and Tom and their Cromasaig B&B. The shower felt like somebody was warming the water with a very small kettle, the floorboards were creaky at places and Scots have a different understanding of “warm” then Estonians but my god was it homely. The food prepared by Liz (who also acts as a mountain rescue coordinator and local radio DJ) was delicious and Tom was an endless source of stories of the Hairless Woolly Mammoth he had seen the other day and how he was an officer (rather high-ranking by the looks of it) with the british Special Air Service. Oh, and did I mention they have a bird feeder outside their kitchen window where I counted 6 species during one breakfast and another feeder visible from the table where pine martins appear punctually 0830 hrs every night just to entertain you between the main course and dessert? Secondly, where else you find that everybody speaks exactly like housemaster Willy from the Simpsons or meet a cabbie who looks, sounds and behaves like an extra from “The Snatch”? Where else you see people wearing football-related tatoos?

Needless to say, I ache to get back there.

Non-technical equipment

The rest of the equipment performed well. My Garmont boots (Nebraska GTX by the looks of them) were very comfortable and surprisingly watertight. Combined with the Lorpen Coolmax socks they left my feet dry even after 10 hours of tramping around in wet sphagnum. Amazing. The single-layer Fjällräven jacket I had was good at keeping the water out (which it was designed to do) but was not breathable or windproof enough so I ended up being cold more often than I wished for. HellyHansen baselayers worked ok and the Buff was surprisingly warm and comfortable.

Conclusions

Well, the biggest conclusion is that it makes absolutely no sense in buying your photography gear from Estonia as opposed to over the internet. Estonian community of photographers needs to stand up and start supporting merchants from UK, Germany or USA instead of Estonia. This is why:

They offer you no value whatsoever

The sales staff (with few exceptions) is completely ignorant. “A tripod is something like we have in that corner, right?” was an actual response I got at some point
They have nothing in stock so you either need to wait for it or drive across town. For Canon equipment the delivery time is roughly two weeks. BHPhotoVideo can get stuff to you within a couple of days.
The guarantee and product support is non-existent. For anything but Canon your item is shipped to where ever (including Japan) with waiting times extending to several months. And you can read about my experience with Canon above
Estonia has not joined the Canon 2 Year Warranty program. Which means that while people in civilized countries get something for needing to put up with their 1st series bodies breaking down and being recalled all the time, we don’t.

They are more expensive

Eos 1D Mark III costs GBP at Warehosue Express which amounts to roughly 50k EEK. It costs 10 k more in Photopoint and 16k more at Overall. The same item is $4,049.95 + VAT at BHPhotoVideo. Roughly the same proportions hold with other equipment (with an exception of italian tripods where the difference is smaller). Think about it like this: fly from Tallinn to New York for $738, stay at a OK hotel for $120 an night, go to the BHPhotoVideo store, pick up your 500 f/4 for $5800, fly home, pay the VAT and you end up with a total cost of roughly $7700. Or, alternatively, go to Overall and pay them $9900. You’d have yourself a cool New York weekend, a brilliant lense AND YOU STILL SAVE $2000! You’ve gotta be immensely rich or insane to buy from Overall.

Their attitude towards customers is unbearable

There are countless stories around about how a faulty piece of equipment was not replaced (or the customer told to wait 4 months until it gets fixed), how the buyer was lured into buying with promises of discount that never materialized etc. Buy a 5D, 1D or the 400 f/4 they have on display from Photopoint, and get printing of 50 images for free! Plus a discount card that gives you discount on…. printing. Nothing else. Yes, thank you, I’ll go and sit in a blind for 12 hours to get them eagles good and then I come and print them on 10×15 at your not-colour-proofed lab. It goes for most of the importers, resellers and photography stores around here.

TAGS: 1D Mark III error 99, estonian photography, scotland