Buying a used camera

Used gear is where the value is. A five-year-old enthusiast body is a fraction of its launch price and takes the same pictures; a thirty-year-old manual lens can outresolve a modern kit zoom. The risk is not that used gear is bad — it is that a specific list of faults is invisible in a photograph and expensive to fix.

Work through the eight below and you will catch nearly everything that matters.

The eight faults to look for

1. Fungus

A living growth inside the lens. It looks like white filaments, a spider's web, or frost creeping in from the edge of an element. How to check: hold a small flashlight against the front of the lens and look in through the rear at an angle. Dust looks like specks; fungus looks organic and branching.

Caught early it is a cleanable repair. Left long enough the growth etches the lens coating and the damage is permanent. It also spreads to neighbouring lenses in a closed bag. A fungused lens is a hard no unless it is nearly free and you have already priced the cleaning.

2. Haze

A fine, even mist on an internal element — usually lubricant that has evaporated from the focus helicoid and condensed on the glass. It is far easier to miss than fungus because it is uniform. How to check: same flashlight test; haze shows as a soft glow rather than distinct marks. In use it kills contrast and makes the lens flare badly into any light source. Usually cleanable, sometimes not, and always a bargaining point.

3. Element separation

Older lenses cement pairs of elements together. When that cement fails you get separation — an iridescent, oil-slick or rainbow-edged patch, typically starting at the rim of an element and working inward. It is not cleanable; re-cementing is specialist work that usually costs more than the lens. Common on older fast primes and vintage zooms, and one of the few faults that is genuinely terminal.

4. Shutter count (digital)

Every mechanical shutter has a rated life — roughly 100,000 actuations on consumer DSLRs, 150,000–200,000 on enthusiast bodies, and 300,000–500,000 on professional ones. Free tools read the count from a recent JPEG's metadata, and any honest seller will tell you.

Do not treat the rating as a cliff. It is an average expected life, plenty of shutters exceed it comfortably, and a replacement is a known repair with a quotable price. But a high count should move the price, and a seller who "doesn't know" the count on a camera that reports it is a seller not to buy from.

5. Light seals (film bodies)

The foam strips in the film door channels of most cameras from the 1970s onward degrade into black goo. Symptoms are light leaks — orange or white streaks across your frames — and the goo itself getting on the film. How to check: open the back and run a fingernail or cotton swab along the channels. Crumbly or sticky means gone.

This is the friendliest fault on the list. Replacement kits are inexpensive, it is a common DIY job, and a shop will do it cheaply. Any old film camera advertised as "recently serviced" should have had this done — ask.

6. Sticky aperture blades

Oil migrates from the focus mechanism onto the aperture blades, and they slow down or stop closing. On an SLR lens this means the aperture does not stop down in time when you fire, so every shot is effectively wide open and overexposed. On a leaf-shutter camera the same problem stops the shutter dead.

How to check: look at the blades — visible oil films or shine are a bad sign — then work the aperture ring through its range while watching them. They should snap. If they ooze, walk away or price in a repair.

7. De-centring

An internal element knocked off its axis, usually by a drop. The lens looks perfect and takes photographs that are sharp on one side of the frame and soft on the other, at every aperture and every distance.

How to check: photograph a flat, detailed, parallel surface — a brick wall or a newspaper taped up flat — square on, wide open, and compare the corners. Consistent asymmetry that survives a couple of attempts means de-centring. Repair means realignment on a bench; on an inexpensive lens it is not worth it.

8. Zoom creep and mechanical slop

Hold a zoom vertically. If the barrel slides under its own weight, the internal friction is worn out. It is annoying rather than fatal, and it points to a well-used lens. While you are there, wobble the mount and the front element: any play, grinding or gritty focus is a lens that has had a hard life. Check the filter thread for dents — a dinged thread means the lens took an impact, which is exactly what causes de-centring.

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The grading systems are cosmetic only

This is the thing that catches out almost every first-time buyer of used gear online. KEH, MPB, B&H and Adorama condition grades describe appearance, not function. They tell you how much brassing, paint loss and scuffing to expect on the outside. They are not a mechanical or optical rating.

The practical consequences are worth spelling out:

• A beaten-up bargain-grade body can be mechanically perfect. This is why experienced buyers deliberately shop the bottom grades — you are paying less for scratches you will add yourself within a year.
• A pristine-looking item is not certified to work. Cosmetic condition and optical condition are different axes. Fungus, haze and separation live inside the lens, where the grader's eye for scuffs does not reach.
• What actually protects you is the return window and the warranty. Read those before you read the grade. A generous return period on a bargain-grade lens is a far better deal than a short one on a like-new lens.
• Inspect on arrival, immediately. Run the eight checks above the day the box lands, while you are still inside the return window. That window is the entire functional guarantee you bought.

Buying in a shop: what to do at the counter

The advantage of a physical store is that you can test the specific item rather than a grade describing it. Bring a flashlight, a battery and a card, and if you are buying a lens, your own body.

1. Flashlight test the glass — fungus, haze, separation.
2. Fire the shutter at every speed, especially the slow ones. They should sound clean and distinct; a 1-second exposure that runs long is a camera needing service.
3. Stop the aperture down and watch the blades snap.
4. Work the focus end to end. Smooth and even, no grinding, no free play.
5. Shoot twenty frames to your own card and look at them on a real screen, not the camera's LCD.
6. On a film body, check the light seals and the meter, and confirm the battery type is still made — some old bodies want mercury cells that no longer exist.
7. Ask what warranty comes with it, in days, and get it on the receipt.

A shop with a technician on site is the best place to buy used, because the gear has usually passed under someone who knows what to look for — 300 businesses here show evidence of on-site repair work.

Know the price before you go

Look up recent completed sale prices, not asking prices, for the exact model and check what the big resellers charge for the same item in a middling grade. That gives you the market. A local shop will often be slightly above the cheapest online price — reasonable, since you get to test it and take it home — but "slightly" is the operative word.

Then work backwards from what a fix would cost. A lens that needs a clean, a body that needs light seals, a shutter approaching its rating: all are quotable numbers, and all are legitimate reasons to negotiate. See what repairs actually cost before you decide a fault is a dealbreaker — some are $30 problems.

Common questions

Do KEH, MPB, B&H and Adorama condition grades tell me if a camera works?

No — and this is the single most misunderstood thing about buying used online. Those grades describe cosmetic condition: how much brassing, scuffing and wear is visible on the outside. They are not a functional rating. A "Bargain" body that looks chewed up can be mechanically perfect, and a near-mint one can have a sticky aperture. What actually protects you is the return window and the warranty, not the letter grade — so read those first and treat the grade as a description of how it will look on your shelf.

What is lens fungus and can it be cleaned?

Fungus is a living growth inside the lens that looks like fine white filaments, a spider web or frost spreading from the edge of an element. In early stages a repair technician can often disassemble and clean it. Left long enough it etches the coating and sometimes the glass itself, which is permanent. It also spreads to other lenses stored nearby. Shine a small flashlight through the lens from the front while looking through the back — fungus is unmistakable once you have seen it once.

How many shutter actuations is too many?

It depends entirely on the body. Consumer DSLRs are typically rated around 100,000 actuations, enthusiast bodies around 150,000–200,000, and professional bodies 300,000–500,000. Those are averages before an expected failure, not expiry dates — plenty of shutters run far past their rating. Treat the count as mileage on a car: a pro body at 200,000 may well be a better buy than a consumer body at 90,000, and a shutter replacement is a known, quotable repair rather than the end of the camera.

Is it safer to buy used gear in person at a camera store?

It is a different kind of safe. In person you can test the actual item — fire the shutter at every speed, stop the aperture down, shoot a card and look at the files — which no online listing lets you do. Online you get a stated return window and often a warranty, which a private seller never gives you. The worst option is a private cash sale with no return and no testing. A camera store sits in the middle and usually offers both a test and some warranty.

What should I bring to test a used camera in the shop?

A small flashlight for looking through lenses, a charged battery and a memory card that fit the camera if you own them, and if you are buying a lens, your own body to mount it on. Ask to shoot twenty frames and look at them on a screen rather than the camera's LCD. Any shop that will not let you do this is telling you something.