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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-26-2011, 06:55 PM
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By your own admission, the $384 price you're quoting is only that way because of a currency fluctuation, and has little to do with real world pricing. If your stated values are really the cheapest available, the grip actually cost only ~20% more in Sweden than in the USA before the fluctuation. Your 2500 kronor didn't instantly become worth correspondingly less with the exchange rate fluctuation, and the grip's kronor price didn't get raised to ~3840 kronor, so why shout about it being "over 10 times the price" when that's simply not true?
It doesn't help your argument when you appear to be clutching at straws to try and back it up.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-19-2011, 09:02 AM
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I've lived on three continents, so I'm pretty familiar with perceptions of different currencies around the world.
I think it's safe to say when you make a statement in dollars without mentioning the currency, few members of this forum who aren't already aware of your location will assume you're talking about Australian dollars -- and that most will likely assume you mean US dollars, if they try to make a guess.
US population: 307,006,550
Australia population: 21,874,900
Netherlands population: 16,531,294
Mythical "Netheralia" combined population: 38,406,194 ;-)
"Netheralia" size compared to US population: 12.5%
This is, by and large, an English-speaking forum. The United States is -- far and away -- the largest population of native English-language speakers in the world. (It's still the largest even when you consider people speaking English as a second language, although India isn't too terribly far behind, apparently. Australia just barely scrapes into the top ten.)
Yes, I'm sure there are a few places here or there which have price disparities for the official Pentax grip. I'm equally sure there are places where the cheap knock-offs aren't as cheap as they should be. I can't confirm the validity of your claimed price, because I don't live in Australia, and hence don't know which retailers offer good values there, and which are gouging. Could be you're right and Australia is charging double the typical price for that grip. From my point of view, though, it could equally be that you don't know where the official grip is best priced in Australia.
That's all beside the point, though, which is that given the populations above, most forum members likely don't have anywhere near as large a price differential as a few members here seem to, and for most people, it's not even remotely close to the truth to claim you could afford a lens for the price difference.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-14-2011, 11:11 PM
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I'm presuming you're talking non-US dollars, which you should probably clarify given that most other users won't be in the same country as you.
Given that list pricing for the D-BG4 is only US$200, it's impossible to have saved US$300 on a single grip. The DX grip might be cheap, but they sure don't hand you a hundred dollar bill to take one. ;-)
As for what it saves you, Sakura suggested it would fund a lens purchase. I put it to him that the difference in price between the D-BG4 list and the DX retail prices would barely cover the cost of a poor quality third-party consumer-grade lens new, or perhaps an old manual focus lens or two of intermediate quality. It certainly wouldn't cover the cost of any lens most K-7 owners would want to buy, let alone list pricing for any current Pentax lens model.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
01-14-2011, 01:43 PM
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You sure do like to insist the third party grips' are the second coming, Sakura, but the fact is that your protestations aside, a portion of their users do find them inadequate in terms of quality, fit, and finish.
I'm not sure I'd want to see what lens you intend to buy with the extremely modest difference in price between the first-party and third-party grips, either.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-27-2010, 12:40 AM
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The recall is a one for one exchange for people who haven't had an issue, yes. You can guarantee that anybody whose product was destroyed by an acknowledged defect that was the manufacturer's fault didn't have to pay for their repair or replacement, though.
Making somebody pay to repair or replace their laptop, music player, camera or whatever else when the company has just acknowledged that the damage was caused by their own defect wouldn't just be illogical, it'd be a PR nightmare (and potential lawsuit) in the offing. Local laws might even specifically disallow a company from trying to shirk responsibility for an acknowledged design or manufacturing defect.
There's not a chance of any reputable company being daft enough to force a handful of people to pay for their own repair or replacement (at a cost that would be a pittance to the company itself), while considering an issue serious enough to replace hundreds of thousands of batteries for people who haven't actually been affected at all. The cost of the product replacements would be microscopic compared to the cost of the recall itself, and compared to the potential damage that negative publicity or lawsuits could cost the company.
OK, so small sample size again. As you noted, batteries can vary from batch to batch. (They also vary depending on how they're treated -- it's my experience that batteries which aren't run through several full charge cycles at the start of their life generally yield significantly reduced battery life).
It's possible your third-party battery has higher charge; it's equally possible that this was caused either by how your batteries have been used, or simply bad luck on your part on the specific original manufacturer batteries you've received.
Sorry, but not a chance of that happening. I value my camera far too much to put a no-name battery in it, and as I've said several times, I've yet to find any name brand other than Pentax themselves that supplies a D-LI90. Were somebody like Maha or another name brand to offer one, I'd try it. I'm not touching an Ebay cheapie, though... ;-)
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-26-2010, 06:13 PM
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And I can pretty much guarantee you given the numerous media field days around battery fires, and the numerous recalls (Nikon recalled three quarters of a MILLION batteries for just four failures, remember), that regardless of anything the warranty says, you'd get a new camera if your existing one caught fire through no fault of your own. You probably wouldn't even have to stamp your feet to get it. Odds are a reputable company would be extremely eager to get the faulty battery back so they could inspect it and be sure whether or not they had a larger problem on their hands.
That is, if it was an original battery. If it was a third-party battery, it's very unlikely they'd have any interest in doing anything other than giving you a quote for the parts and labor for repair.
Nothing specific to Pentax, but the fact that one of Pentax's main rivals, who have a fairly similar corporate culture, recalled three quarters of a million batteries for just four failures is a fairly good indicator.
That's fair enough. Equally, I won't bash somebody over the head to get them not to use third party batteries -- I'll just point out the advantages and disadvantages. They go quite a way beyond just supporting the company that made your camera.
How many real Pentax D-LI90 batteries have you compared to out of curiosity, and have you done a controlled test, or is this just your gut feeling?
And would you say the third party battery gives 85% more shots than the Pentax ones, which it should do if their claim is true?
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-26-2010, 02:16 PM
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If you re-read my posts, you'll see I never claimed otherwise. What I did say was that if the battery fails with a battery from a brand-name, you have a warranty to fall back on (and a pretty good chance of getting your camera itself replaced, if it's damaged by a battery failure).
Which rather proves my point. With no-name third party batteries, you'd have had no recourse -- either for the battery itself, or for the product it was used with. For a name-brand battery, you have a warranty and recourse.
And it could just as easily have gone the other way around. I'm not familiar with Blackberry's warranty terms, but chances are you were still covered again in that instance. The chances of you having been covered by a warranty with a no-name battery are about zip.
3500mAh printed on a battery that's supposedly identical in design to an original battery that's 1860mAh makes me raise my eyebrow, to say the least. Third parties can't magically fit more powerful cells in the same housing than the original manufacturer can, and we've not had any advancements since the K-7 shipped to nearly double lithium ion charge density.
That's another of the problems with no-name third parties that I've already mentioned in this thread. They can print absolutely anything they like on the label, true or not. I'd wager that battery pack contains nowhere near 3500mAh. Honestly, I'd be surprised if it provides much more than the Pentax version, if any at all. With a name-brand battery, you at least have a reasonable expectation that the battery will provide somewhere near what's printed on the label. With the no-name third party battery, that's often not the case, and a battery that's claimed to offer the same as or more than the original battery can turn out to offer far less charge capacity.
And I'll say it once again, by "name brand", I don't mean the same brand as the product it's used in -- I just mean a reputable company with a brand name somebody's heard of, a warranty, and a clear way for the customer to contact them. That includes the original manufacturer (Pentax or whomever), big names like Eveready etc., and lesser known names like Maha, etc. Thing is, I'm not aware of any big names other than Pentax themselves offering the D-LI90 yet. Our choices are basically Pentax, or the no-names. Hopefully that'll change, and thankfully Pentax hasn't taken the route of some manufacturers in making it so that *only* their batteries will physically work.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-26-2010, 08:06 AM
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Yep, I never claimed they were *all* bad, just that they're more likely to be bad than a name-brand battery. Third-party batteries are probably more likely to vary from batch to batch, as well -- so what's great in one batch might not be in the next one.
The components likely come from the same place, but what's important is how they're assembled, the quality of components used, and the level of quality control applied.
We're talking about totally no-name batteries here. I already stated I'd be fine with buying from a name-brand that stood behind their products (and warranted the products in which their used from damage that's the fault of the battery).
There are third-parties out there who I'd consider name brands, such as Maha / PowerEx for example. I'm not aware of any such reputable third-parties making knockoff K-7 batteries, though. All the third-party K-7 batteries I've seen are the no-name, no-warranty, no quality control, no thank you batteries.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-25-2010, 06:17 PM
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...in your experience, with a sample size of one person and "several" batteries.
It's not scare mongering, it's stating simple facts. No-name third party batteries aren't necessarily built with the same quality as original products, quite possibly may not be labelled anywhere near close to truthfully as regards their charge capacity, and don't necessarily even comply with local or national safety certifications.
You get what you pay for, and with battery chemistries that are known for their potential dangers, it only makes sense to consider the safety implications. If you're unlucky enough to lose your camera -- or perhaps even your house or business, if the battery bursts into flames in a charger when you're not nearby -- you'd likely be singing a very different tune. One can only comment based on one's own experiences, and insisting nobody else should have concern because you as one specific individual haven't had a problem simply doesn't make sense.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-25-2010, 04:56 PM
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Small, but worth being aware of. What's worth it to you might not be worth it to somebody else.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-25-2010, 10:10 AM
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No one on these forums has *reported* a problem, that you or I have seen.
Note that camera battery fires DO happen. It's easy to find reports of them on Google, as well as past recalls of digital camera batteries even from name-brand companies.
Nikon recalled almost three quarters of a million digital SLR batteries a few years back due to a potential fire hazard:
Nikon announces massive battery recall - CNET News
Yes, it's fairly unlikely (although it's significantly more likely for a counterfeit battery than for a name-brand one). It's still not worth the risk, if you ask me.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-24-2010, 06:23 PM
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So you think laptops, ipods and all manner of other devices can catch fire with the exact same battery technology, but DSLRs are magically immune?
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-24-2010, 08:19 AM
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35 bucks, compared to the cost of the camera, is "a few bucks". If you can afford the camera and the lenses to go with it, you can afford the battery. If you can't afford the battery, you most likely can't afford the camera itself.
And a battery can catch fire but still be identifiable when extracted from the camera. (In fact, I'd be surprised if it wasn't identifiable on close inspection). You can bet if it was reported to the manufacturer, they'd be looking at it *very* closely to try and identify why it failed.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-23-2010, 11:15 PM
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Personally, I wouldn't risk off-brand batteries. With high energy density lithium ion batteries, even the name brands are occasionally getting it wrong -- the high-profile battery fires from brands like Apple, Dell, HP and Sony should be more than enough proof of that. Chances are that no-name third-party batteries are built to lower tolerances, and have an even greater risk of failure.
If a name-brand battery catches fire in your camera, it's fairly likely you'll get the camera replaced for free, to avoid a potential PR nightmare for the company in question. If a third-party battery fails though, chances are it'll take your camera with it. Even if you can get the third-party battery out, it'll be fairly obvious what happened, and the manufacturer isn't going to replace your camera without seeing the battery. When they see it's not their fault, they're unlikely to want to bear the cost of repair.
Is it really worth risking losing your expensive camera body, to save a few bucks on a battery?
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-04-2010, 01:16 PM
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Couldn't agree more. If you read my comments earlier in this thread, you'll see I've said much the same myself.
I'm sure you'll ignore this reply, just like you've ignored the valid points made in every reply in this thread that doesn't reaffirm your own beliefs. It has already been pointed out that the DX grip in particular is a near-exact ripoff of Pentax's own grip (at least, on the outside), right down to the position of every last screw. The only difference is that they cheaped out and saved a cent or two on some rubber bumpers and seals (and likely cheaped out on the components inside, where you can't see the sacrifices made in the interests of saving another few cents). So please, do enlighten me on exactly where their costs to design their grip were, given that they didn't design it themselves?
Oh, wait. You reckon it doesn't cost more than $5 to design a grip anyway. That being the case, why did you even buy one - you could've saved money by just designing your own. All you do is throw a piece of metal at your computer, and a grip magically appears, right? Two minutes testing and hey presto, you're set. :rolleyes:
Your relentless cheerleading for the third party grips, and especially the DX one -- even when others report problems with their own third party grips -- could almost suggest that you worked for DX. ;-)
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
05-04-2010, 08:11 AM
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Because these companies make most of their money from the accessories, not the cameras themselves.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-10-2010, 09:58 PM
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Yes, I absolutely know what I am talking about.
From http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdf:
 Quote: "Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is created in fixed form. The copyright in the work of authorship immediately becomes the property of the author who created the work. Only the author or those deriving their rights through the author can rightfully claim copyright.
Copyright Secured Automatically upon Creation
The way in which copyright protection is secured is frequently misunderstood. No publication or registration or other action in the Copyright Office is required to secure copyright. (See following note.) There are, however, certain definite advantages to registration.
Copyright Registration
In general, copyright registration is a legal formality intended to make a public record of the basic facts of a particular copyright. However, registration is not a condition of copyright protection. Even though registration is not a requirement for protection, the copyright law provides several inducements or advantages to encourage copyright owners to make registration.
Registration may be made at any time within the life of the copyright." From Copyright registration - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Quote: "It is a common misconception to confuse copyright registration with the granting of copyright.
Copyright is itself an automatic international right, governed by international conventions - principally the Berne Convention (which dates from 1886). This means that copyright exists whether a work is registered or not. When the US finally signed up to the Convention in 1989, the internal registration system was retained, but foreign works must now be treated as though already registered in the US in accordance with the Berne Convention." From Copyright - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Quote: "In all countries that are members of the Berne Convention copyright is automatic, and need not be obtained through official registration with any government office. Once an idea has been reduced to tangible form, for example by securing it in a fixed medium (such as a drawing, sheet music, photograph, a videotape, or a computer file), the copyright holder is entitled to enforce his or her exclusive rights. However, while registration isn't needed to exercise copyright, in jurisdictions where the laws provide for registration, it serves as prima facie evidence of a valid copyright." As I stated, there are *advantages* to registering copyright, one of which is that it enables one to file an infringement case in court. It is absolutely NOT true that you don't have copyright protection without registration, however. Registration for a work can still be made at any time, and it is still possible to launch an infringement case once registration has been made - it will just be harder to prove you're the copyright holder, and the potential damages will be lower.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-09-2010, 09:46 PM
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That would be true of connectors and anything that's an absolute requirement to allow the devices to connect and function together. It would NOT necessarily be true of anything that's not such an absolute requirement. IANAL, but I do know that you CAN patent the design of a product in the US, and it doesn't even have to be an exact copy of the original to be illegal.
Design patent - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
...unless (as you note) the knockoffs are being made on the very same equipment that Pentax paid for, without their permission, in a supplier's factory. It happens to other high-tech companies, and there's every chance it's happening here too.
There was no personal attack. There *was* a parody of his own unnecessary shouting, and a post pointing out that he completely ignored the issue at hand and pretended that he felt there was nothing wrong with buying a ripoff product, when very clearly he would be upset were it his own product being ripped off.
That is absolutely and definitively NOT true. There is no requirement in (US) law for copyright to be registered on an image, text, etc. for copyright to be enforceable. Yes, you can derive extra benefits in enforcing your copyrighted work if you take the time and money to register it, but you are still protected even for an unregistered work.
There are some fair use rights to derivative works, but they're a decidedly gray area with no hard-and-fast rule as to how much of the original work is allowable in the derivative, Fair use rights don't apply to a 100% exact copy of a work, however.
Removing the manufacturer's name and selling an otherwise identical copy doesn't make something any less a counterfeit. Try going out and making an exact copy of an Apple iPod and selling it as "for iTunes" on the box. See exactly how far you get, before you get sued into oblivion. It won't be long, I promise. The only difference between that fictional counterfeit product and this one is that it's a much bigger mass-market product which generates far greater profits for its creator, and hence will appear on their radar earlier, and be treated with greater urgency.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-08-2010, 10:41 AM
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GOOD NEWS EVERYBODY! SAKURA'S PHOTOGRAPHS ARE NOW FREE OF CHARGE!
Do whatever you like with them. Print them for personal use. Sell them to somebody else for use in an advertising campaign. He's indicated that his personal belief is that it is not stealing to buy something that's a 100% identical copy made by an unauthorized third party, rather than from the person who created it.
Thanks, Sakura! I'm sure we'll all enjoy getting rich off your hard work.
Hope you don't get upset at us. It's your fault, after all - if you don't like it you should've dropped your prices.
:p :rolleyes:
/newsflash - you don't get to decide what others discuss on this or any other forum - just what you choose to reply to.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-07-2010, 02:07 PM
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Rubbish, and you don't honestly believe that yourself. The arbiter of law is not the specific dictionary you chose to try and back up your argument, but the legal system.
Oh goodie, another poster being obtuse and carefully pretending not to understand the distinction so they can feel better about themself.
In every single one of your examples above, the item in question is not a 100% identical copy, but rather a third-party item created as the result of the third party's own development work.
In the case of this grip, it is 100% unquestionably a direct copy, down to the placement of every last screw. They did no work, they simply stole somebody else's design.
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be happy if your own work was stolen. You're presumably a photographer, so consider this. Would you be happy if I took your image and sold it for 1/4 of your own asking price, keeping the profit for myself? After all, you still have the original copy of your image, so you "lost nothing". I made the image with my own printer, and it's 100% identical in the placement of every last dot of ink to the image you'd have printed. The fact that somebody bought my image which took me no work to make *must* just mean you're charging to much, right?
There's absolutely no difference here.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-07-2010, 08:41 AM
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It's already been demonstrated in this thread that Pentax's price is similar to those charged by its competitors for similar grips.
"I know for sure" that if Pentax sold its grip for a quarter of the price, there would still be whiners insisting it was daylight robbery, and purchasing counterfeit goods for cheaper (and the counterfeit goods can ALWAYS be made cheaper because there's no R&D costs, no warranty costs, no support costs, no marketing costs, and quite possibly even little to no tooling or materials costs if they're products made outside "working hours" at a supplier's factory, using materials rejected as inferior quality for the real thing).
Try to justify it to yourself if you like, but the real issue is that if they're identical to the original grip in design (quality aside), then these products aren't in any gray area - they're unquestionably illegal.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
04-06-2010, 11:33 PM
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Presuming it functions identically to the factory grip, it's not a power switch. It simply enables or disables the portrait-mode shutter release button on the grip, so that you don't accidentally trigger or half-press it by bumping it against something.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-27-2010, 01:41 PM
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It's significantly less expensive because the cost of doing business (employees, property, etc.) are cheaper. Were they to make them in Japan, it'd be even more (comparitively) expensive.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-27-2010, 10:12 AM
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Glad to see principles still exist. ;-) I bought the original grip, and were I to buy again, I'd buy the original grip again - price difference or not.
These third-party knockoffs are frequently terribly made -- especially on the inside where it counts, as well. Despite some people's assertions to the contrary, they can (and occasionally do) damage your camera body. Heck, they could conceivably hurt you, the photographer, too.
Read some of the reviews of folks who've opened them up to find things like electrical contacts almost touching each other (or great big blobs of solder nearly touching between contacts) that could short out a high energy density lithium-ion battery and cause a fire. Or the folks who've found parts falling off their third-party grips within days of receipt, batteries failing to contact properly (or sometimes even fit in the first place). Or found they wouldn't even fit on their camera body properly because the design was out of spec. Etc, etc. - there are plenty of bad reviews out there for most of the main brands that produce these knockoffs.
The reason their products are so cheap is that there's no design costs, no marketing costs, no warranty costs, no certification, possibly no tooling costs if they're ghost shift products, and the absolute bare minimum of quality control if any at all. You're taking a gamble when you buy these products, whether you care to admit it or not.
You're also taking profit away from the company who spent a fortune designing and making your cameras and lenses (and with relatively thin margins, especially on the camera bodies themselves, where the DSLR market is rapidly becoming as cut-throat as the compact market did). Take away their opportunities to profit and the next time you're considering buying a replacement for your camera body, they may just not be around any more to make one for you.
Personally, I'd rather support the company whose system I've bought into, which makes quality products with good warranties and no risk of personal injury.
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Forum: Pentax DSLR Discussion
03-06-2010, 03:37 PM
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Since the only thing you'll accept is total agreement with your position, then yes, we'll consider this conversation closed.
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