Have you looked into purchasing new photography equipment lately? Your finally ready to buy that Canon 5D mark II? Or perhaps a new lens? Having a little trouble?
Last week I picked up the 100mm Macro 2.8L from B&H, and as with most of my lens and camera purchases I suffered a huge internal debate as to if I really needed to buy this. As I’ve posted before I often rent my equipment from BorrowLenses.com but I’ve already rented this lens before and how many times can I justify renting it before it’s worth buying? So I did it, picked it up. No regrets. Done. If I had heard any of the things last week that have come to light this week I wouldn’t have hesitated as much to buy the lens!

Perhaps it’s because of this recent Canon Lens purchase that my awareness is heightened, or perhaps it’s just because this is a new week, but this week has been the week of where the @#%^! is the photography equipment! Guess I got lucky because I know where all my photo equipment is. But having two of my friend (Matt & Nami) in the market for new cameras I’ve noticed they are having a problem. Come to think of it, everyone is having a problem or will be soon (myself included). And this problem is not getting better or going away, it’s getting worse!

Wednesday night I went to a great talk by Seth Resnick, a Canon Explorer of Light (living the dream Seth…. living the dream.) sponsored by ASMP. He mentions this gear shortage.

Look familiar?

It will only be getting more and more common. Resnick said that after the Earthquake-tsunami-meltdown tragedy Japan’s camera power players Canon and Nikon are both barely running. One of the hardest obstacles for the companies to deal with is frequent power outages at the factories. If you haven’t guessed, this means little to no new production. Resnick was told “if it’s not at B&H, it’s not going to be anywhere” and that delays “could be as long as a year” in getting everything back on track. I  would guess that pertains to after the current supplies run out. But it is as bad as it sounds. Already your seeing the only big player selling the 5D Mark 2 is Andorama, and it’s about $200 more than it would be sold for at B&H, if they had it in stock.

Want to play a disturbing game? Go to B&H’s website, search for Canon L series lenses. Looks fine and dandy for the first page, but about 2/3 down the second page the unavailable items start, then continue through the end of the 3rd page. That means about half the L series lens inventory is already gone from B&H till Canon works out the kinks and gets product again. Scary, I  know.

PDN has some great reading on it and recommends a VERY useful site is www.nowinstock.net where you can see who still has inventory.

Guess if anyone is sitting on used equipment, the time to sell it for the max amount is just about here. Or if any of my readers are on the fence about purchasing new photography equipment just the rumor of this being true should move you to get it while you can. Good luck everyone. Now all we can do is wait and perhaps be a little more careful with our equipment.