Advantages of a Store Bought Camera
We all know that the internet is a great place to find discounted prices for products, but I have to tell you, I’ve found some true advantages to buying products from local merchants.
I’ve long believed in the internet when it comes to using it as a tool for research on products or other things of interest. It just can’t be beat in this area. The main issue with doing research on the internet though, is that you need to pay close attention to who the source of that information is and whether or not they have any biases one way or another. I’ve learned to trust little I read, unless I’m familiar with the source or there is enough evidence to backup what that source is saying.
In the case of my new camera though, I decided to do my research online in order to find out what was out there in terms of cameras. I was primarily interested in camera reviews and trends in camera technologies. One really valuable online resource that I referred to was dpreview.com.
A friend had told me about this site a while back and it’s stuck in the back of my mind ever since. It’s just great to be able to read about what cameras people like and dislike, as well as features they wish had been included, etc. You can learn a ton from online forums.
My plan though was to buy my camera from a local store who – in the future – would be there to help me resolve issues with my camera or answer questions about it. I really did not want to buy online and then maybe have to ship it back to an online store if I had a problem.
This turned out to be the right decision for a couple of reasons. First, a good local camera store knows that their pricing needs to be competitive with online pricing. In terms of my camera, the difference in online pricing and what my local store was asking turned out to be negligible.
A second advantage to buying from local camera store was the fact that they also offered free classes in how to use your new camera. This turned out to be a huge bonus and the instruction was much better than I anticipated.
Valued at $40 per class, I decided to sign up for two of the classes they offered for using a digital SLR camera. These classes were not only taught by a photographer, they also followed a very tight two and half hour curriculum. There were some really helpful tips that I learned that no one has ever told me about in the past, even in the photography classes that I had back in college.
The neat thing about these classes was that they encouraged everyone to bring their cameras to class. If there was a feature or button on a camera that someone didn’t understand, the instructor could show them how it all worked.
The Nikon manual that came with my camera kept referring to a button simply marked as a <i>. For the life of me, I could not figure how this worked on my camera. They showed the location of <i> in the manual, but it only worked in certain shooting modes. I took my camera into class, and within seconds I had my answer…
I’ll review the main points that I learned in class in upcoming topics, but just suffice it to say that I was very glad that I had decided to buy my new digital camera from my favorite local camera store, rather than to make my purchase online where it might take a day or two to get an email reply.
Source: Digital Camera Notebook
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