Providing Pre-Owned products you can rely on and trust.
For over 20 years, we have been primarily dealing with pre-owned camera gear. From film to digital and lenses to strobes, we handle all photography-related pre-owned gear. But, what really makes us different, and why can you trust a piece of gear you purchase from Camera West? Each lens, camera, and/or piece of lighting gear goes through extensive testing to ensure that it is ready for its next owner, but we don't stop there. We understand that sending a piece of pre-owned gear to a new home, even after it has been tested to our fullest ability, the camera, lens, or miscellaneous piece of gear may still have something that we either could not test, or did not catch. This is why we have instated a 90-day warranty on all pre-owned gear with an option to extend that coverage to 2 years with a small upfront cost on *most items.
How do we Verify a Pre-Owned Products Function?
All of our pre-owned inventory goes through extensive testing to verify its mechanical soundness. We purchase hundreds of pre-owned items every week, and at the beginning of the process, we go through each item individually, checking for mechanical issues such as slow shutter speeds in-camera, malfunctioning lightmeters, or optical imperfections in lenses such as haze for fungus. We can honestly say that we go to all the measures that we can to verify a camera is fully functioning.
- Optics: In lenses, we are looking for a few different things. We are checking to make sure the lens is clean of debris, fungus, and haze. Many lenses have dust inside of them, which will not impact the image quality of the lens. This is perfectly normal. If a lens has an issue that we cannot get fixed, or might be not economical to fix, we note that in the lens description and the extent of the defect's impact on the performance of the optic. The second thing we check for is mechanical function. On manual focus lenses that is going to be the aperture and focus function and on autofocus lenses we check to make sure the lens is autofocusing properly, and the electronics are in good working order. In some cases, we might not that "the focus is stiff" or "the aperture right is loose." These are normal, but we feel the need to notate the mechanical condition as best possible
- Cameras: With cameras, there are many things that go into checking the function. On digital cameras, we want to make sure the camera doesn't have any electronic issues. We also want to ensure that the mechanical function, buttons, and shutter are all in working order. When it comes to the analog side of things, this is where it gets much more difficult to test and verify a camera is 100% in working condition. We first check the shutter's function, making sure the shutter is free from light leaks, shutter speeds are accurate, and the film will advance through the camera properly. We also check for additional light leaks, and focus accuracy on the camera. To our best ability, we check analog cameras for function, but the final check comes when you run your first roll of film through the camera and develop the images. Since we cannot do this in the store we ask that you test your newly acquired film camera ASAP and get some images developed to verify everything is in tip-top shape.
- Other Gear: Other accessories, lighting equipment, accessories, etc, get tested to ensure proper working order along with their associated camera or lens counterparts.