Why Buying Gear Now is Hard

As my most recent crop of students headed out the door earlier this month, they all started to come in with gear questions – what do I need? Where do I get it? How do I get it at a good price?

As I’ve noted before, we have a great program here at the University of Georgia where we supply all of the gear our kids need to complete their assignments. The downside to this is most of them get to the end of their time here and, well, don’t own a camera. Hence the flurry of questions.

Due to the March tsunami in Japan, the supply chain of gear has been massively affected, so much so that several things they wanted to buy new just didn’t exist. Photo District News has an article updating the supply issues and it still doesn’t look pretty. While the major manufacturers are back online, many of them are hampered by shortages from the suppliers and even electricity rationing.

Patience is a virtue, also the used market. Places like KEH.com are even more valuable now. Classifieds are troublesome if you don’t know what you’re looking for, but you could also try – they tend to have a decent used inventory.