Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler McBain Photography – reputable company?

I want to buy a new camera body (Olympus E30). With the current exchange rate, I can save a few hundred bucks if I buy from Canada, and have them ship to me in the States. I have not bought from this place and have no idea if they are a stand up dealer or not. I sort of stumbled across them at a DP forum when someone recommended them.

I figured one of you “north of the border” photo buffs might know a thing or two about this place.

If this is the McBain out of Alberta, i've dealt with them before. In fact, my wife who works for federal gov't got most of their field cameras from them

The last camera we purchased was a refurb point and shoot that had a warranty the same as a new camera. Worked great for a few years until my young daughter dropped it enough times that one day it quit working.
Went about 5 years though.

Nice camera!

I don't know how Olympus works, but do be careful of the warranty. I'm nearly 100% positive that if you did such a deal for a Canon or Nikon camera, CanonUSA/NikonUSA would not honor the warranty on it. You would need to send it back to the Canadian Canon/Nikon repair center for service. Not that it's a huge deal, but it is something to be aware of.

Do you have any Circuit City's nearby? Might want to check them out. I was at one about 3 weeks ago that had a couple of E-520 kits left for $359. Almost bought one. You never know, you might find one that has an E-30 for half of MSRP.

I heard MarkSJohnson Photography has a great reputation.

JoyMark does good stuff...

I got the feeling from my morning NPR broadcast that Circuit City stores are all shuttered as of today. Sad to see.

Thanks Chess. I feel better about buying from them knowing that.

Good point about the warentee Peter. I'll call them and ask. This particular camera is pretty new. I doubt CC would have them, but I'll check. Thanks for the tip!

Mark Johnson Photography? Who's that? The funny looking Fish Eye'd guy with the square room?

the room that acousticly sucks, but great for photos...

Yeah, the guy who's been showing off his wife's rack.

Now there is something I haven't heard very often.

Ya, usually folks up your way are trying to buy electronics from the states.

I bought the logs for my house from BC. Back then the exchange rate was 1.51

I saved around 40K.

Actually, this is all about the exchange rate conversions...for many years Canadians who are in close prox. to the border(in Ont anyway) did a lot of cross border shopping, then the Cn $ dropped bad (late 90s?) and all of a sudden that dropped off and a lot of Americans reversed the trend and started cross border shopping in Ontario. I'm sure many of the Ontarians on this site recall American used car dealers coming into Ontario en-masse and buying used cars for reselling south of the border...this was on a $0.63 Cn $$. I can't remember exact #'s but there were 10's of thousands of cars heading south at this time, kind of the opposite of what we saw in spring of last year when the Cn $$ was on par ++ with the US $$ and thousands of cars were being bought from the US to Cda.

I'm surprised no one made a McBain joke yet.

Bren R.

I've been waiting for that.