Photography Thailand Forum

[Marc Schultz]

My Remote Shutter Release Cable is on its way out so I decided to buy a new one. The Canon branded ones are around US$50, which is what I paid for my current one and seems like a lot of money to me for a short piece of cable with a button at the end of of it. So I started poking around for cheaper alternatives. I found a cheap Chinese made version on eBay for a total of US$3 (including the cost of shipping to Thailand) from a HK based seller:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300450917722&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

I got it an it works great. It doesn't snap into place with a lock sort of feel like the Canon branded on does, but it works just as good. In fact it works better than my existing Canon one at this point which only fires 25% of the time now. The Chinese version comes loose sometimes if you pull on the cable too much, but it just requires a soft push back in to the camera to make it snug again and that's it. So the branded one is still a bit better quality in terms of the connection to the camera, but for $3 I can buy at least 15 of these copy models before spending as much on a Canon branded one. And its not usually the connection that has a problem with these cables, but the wire starts to develop a short somewhere after a while. So better to buy a cheaper one which you can replace often I think than spend $50 each time one starts to fizzle out. At this point I will probably order a few more for backups since they are so cheap.

If you are a Nikon user the same seller has a variety of them for Nikon cameras for around $2-$3 as well. Just have a hunt through his eBay store.

[Paul Whitehead]

I have also bought a lot of these lately for nikons and panasonics, fantastic value, I cant fault them. Have had the same good value from HK/China on ebay for motordrives also. Interestingly I even been buying nikon flash units much cheaper than here in Thailand also. Globalization is finally good for something ;*)

[Marc Schultz]

Good stuff Paul. I just want to note though that I have also gotten some real junk from some of these HK eBay based sellers. So not everything is good quality that they sell. I have gotten some awful spirit levels for my camera which were not level at all for example and a poor quality camera battery for my Canon 1DS Mark II.

In addition to buying camera stuff from them, I have gotten some useless copy Sony Headphones, some useless replacement cell phone batteries, and a few other useless bits and pieces which weren't great either.

I also got taken once on a thumb drive which was supposed to be 32GB, but really only had only 1GB of storage on it. The Chinese design these fake thumb drives to show as 32GB when you plug them into your computer, but after you load on about 1GB they start crashing. So you do have to watch out sometimes with what you are buying, even from an eBay seller with decent feedback.

All was cheap enough though, so most of it was worth the risk I took in buying it. A lot of people probably see this low priced stuff on eBay from China and HK though and wonder if it is any good when the prices are so low. So since this was a good experience with the cable releases I thought I should point it out in case other people are in the market for one.

[Khun Hans]

Did you ever had an  issue with the customs in Thailand by receiving photo gear from abroad ?
Hans

[Marc Schultz]

Personally I haven't. But it can easily happen if the value of the item is high.

[Gregg Spradling]

I had a flash sent from HK and new shoes from the US, no problems with Thai customs.

The flash was from the Yongnuo Ebay store. Other than that I never trust Ebay.

Yeah, the thumb drive and SD card bootlegs are really good now. They are so good that people are getting burned on Amazon as well.

[David Salmanowitz]

Marc--Thanks for this link, good to have a back up or two and at this price doable. If I just read about this w/o hearing any positive reports I surely would have thought it is a scam. 

[Khun Hans]

Marc--Thanks for this link, good to have a back up or two and at this price doable. If I just read about this w/o hearing any positive reports I surely would have thought it is a scam.  

That's right David. That's what how I would take it. As a scam.
Hans

[Marc Schultz]

A lot of them are. But for $2-$3 its worth a risk sometimes. In this case it turned out to be a good experience.

Regarding Customs duties, my experience has been usually if the declared value is under US$100 or equivalent, they usually don't levy a customs duty on the parcel. But to be sure a declared value of under US$50 on all items is probably best because it is at the discretion of the Customs officer if he wants to levy a tax duty or not. The problem is if the declared value is only $50, and if the real value of the item is say $500, then you take a risk if the item gets lost in the post because postal insurance (assuming you have it added onto the parcel) will only cover the declared value of the parcel. So you if you declare the value much lower than the real value on the parcel there are other obvious risks associated if the parcel gets lost. Declaring a lower value than the actual value is also illegal so bear that in mind. I normally just have the sender declare the real value to avoid any risks.

[Khun Hans]

Yes, understand, Mark. Thanks for the advice.
Hans