Discussion Why does no one here mention "Pre-owned" ?

[Gururu]

From you posts you seem to value what something cost when it was new and the brand stamped onto it rather than how it performs. For example Hasselblad cameras which are just a waste of money for something that doesn’t perform as well as a more modern mirrorless at half the price when you factor in glass. There’s a reason why professionals have used Nikon and Canon for decades rather than Hasselblad and Leica and are now migrating to Sony and Fuji depending on function. Also with wanting to spend 8 grand on a PC with specs that sound nice but ultimately don’t really matter like 128GB of RAM for gaming and a £1000 motherboard because more expensive is surely better regardless of the benefit right? Just because something costs more doesn’t make it inherently better.

Also in the UK consumer protection lasts 6 years so the limited warranty on products really doesn’t do much

You kind of came and crapped on his thread over a topic for which there is no argument. Based on a very quick analysis on the internet, it seems your talking apples and oranges. I can quickly find the merits of a DSLR over mirrorless and vice versa. So why would you have to come into the thread and completely trash his buying decision?

 

[Misgar]

But "uk.webuy.com" apparently thinks I am attacker, and will not let me in.

UK.webuy let me in after a brief pause. Are you using a VPN. I find some sites, e.g CPU-World.com don't work when I using a VPN.

And no editing can fully salvage a badly-taken picture while a good picture doesn't need much if at all editing.

I agree with the above. Get the best possible image recorded in the camera first. Then worry about editing later. As for AI in smart phone cameras, it takes all the "fun" out of getting things right.

If the lighting conditions were difficult, run the RAW files through Adobe Camera RAW (or your favourite app) to recover blown highlights and shadow detail. You can also decide how much digital noise to remove from high ISO shots and the level of sharpening in RAW (I use Topaz).

I shoot RAW + JPG and quite often the JPG is good enough for printing "snaps", to hand back to people whose pictures I've taken. This year I edited roughly 1200 RAW images before printing, because I'm getting more discerning (fussy). I doubt the recipients will notice the difference. They're just happy to get their photos back in hard copy.

For a work laptop used/refurbished can be a good deal

Just bought a couple of office laptops as gifts (Dell and Lenovo) but I changed the batteries because the mains where my friends live is flaky,

Because used computer parts are usually unreliable.

I seem to have had better luck, because nearly all of the second hand parts I've bought on eBay work OK. The cheapest was a mobo, CPU and RAM for £5. Nobody else wanted the old AMD FM2, but it's fine in a simple TrueNAS server.

The most expensive second hand GPU I've ever purchased was an RX 580 in 2024 for £50. Other GPUs include a couple of 2.5GB Quadro 5000s at £15 each, some K620s GT630s and GT710s. All horribly ancient and probably not worth overclocking. These GPUs are not for gaming rigs, just old PCs without iGPUs.

Six years, if you can demonstrate that the product had a fault at the time it was sold.

I've never tested the 6-year limited warranty, because I've usually lost the receipt or the item was too cheap to worry about. For large TVs it provides reassurance if the shop's 5 year warranty has expired, but my 2006 plasma TV is still working up in the computer room. The display has faded and the contrast is nowhere as good as the OLED replacements, but it's fine for non-critical viewing.

So do mirrors because it’s not 1:1,

I'm not worried about only 93 to 95% coverage in an optical viewfinder. I know someone who regularly leaves a good margin around the edges, then uses Puppet Warp or other parallax tweaks in Photoshop to edit museum database images. A Tilt and Shift would be better, but they're not cheap.

I do have a small Fuji with EV, but I still prefer the optical viewfinders on bigger cameras. I can get 900+ shots out of a DSLR battery in a day's shoot, because it's not powering an EV. Longer battery life means slightly less weight in the camera bag and fewer nightly recharges, which can be difficult when there's no mains. I can go for 3 or 4 days without charging batteries and at £110+ each it saves money.

I will admit that mirrorless sensor development is continuing apace as manufacturers switch from DSLR to persuade us to buy new systems, but I haven't jumped ship yet. I'll struggle on with what I've got.

 

[LordVile]

You kind of came and crapped on his thread over a topic for which there is no argument. Based on a very quick analysis on the internet, it seems your talking apples and oranges. I can quickly find the merits of a DSLR over mirrorless and vice versa. So why would you have to come into the thread and completely trash his buying decision?

There’s not that much benefit to a DSLR anymore outside of cost if you’re going for a starter camera, you’ve linked a post which could only name glass options and battery life as positives which aren’t really. It’s not apples and oranges mirrored cameras are the evolution of DSLRs like DSLRs are the evolution of SLRs.

It’s the mindset not the individual buying decision. In the computer space it would be like buying an entry level Alienware from 2015 rather than a new Lenovo or something because the Alienware was more expensive at launch. It wasn’t a great purchase at the time, it was bad value back then and even at 1/2 the price is even worse as things have advanced.

 

[COLGeek]

The camera discussion is wandering a bit from the original path of this thread. Feel free to start a detailed discussion elsewhere.

Thank you.

(sibling site) https://forums.tomsguide.com/forums/cameras.26/

Digital Cameras

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Moonstick2]

For large TVs it provides reassurance if the shop's 5 year warranty has expired...

To reiterate though, the CRA protection isn't the same as a warranty. A manufacturer's warranty basically says "we're happy to cover it for this amount of time if you don't do anything stupid". The CRA protection says "if, on the day you buy it, it's got a fault or wasn't of satisfactory quality you have six years to claim".

A large expensive TV might be arguably expected to last over five years, but it gets unfortunately subjective. If the seller isn't interested then it requires smalls claims court, and the onus is on the buyer at that stage to prove it wasn't of satisfactory quality when bought. If a £2000 55" TV was found to be using no-name components from AliExpress then it might be a successful argument. If it used high-grade expensive components and this is simply one of those 0.001% failures, it may well not be. "It failed, therefore it wasn't satisfactory quality, QED" I'm fairly sure doesn't meet the bar.

 

[Nice Nicer]

If you use a screen as a viewfinder, your perception of light is limited to what the screen can show. Current screens SUCK compared to what the eye can perceive.
And that's why, yes, pro photographs prefer reflex for pictures. Current sensors finally have become comparable to film.

So you need a viewfinder, that is not a screen? How many cameras have both?Hundreds maybe? That screen has more benefits than you think. Screens don't suck. If i take of my glasses to manage to look through a tiny rectangular hole instead of a small screen, i realize that i never would have had fun taking photos If i was born 20 or more years earlier.