EvilBay Bargain Cameras(From China)

Substandard Cameras - An opinion piece

EvilBay should ban many Chinese businesses/accounts. selling 24mp cameras for 30-60 pounds and in reality, they'd 8-12mp effective, it's a total scam. Iso will be low poor, there will no no stabilisation, limited controls over settings, the lens clarity will be mediocre, and if you're lucky you have no standards and think buying new is enough. Maybe the benefit of your bias towards your choices will make you think you got a bargain, but you can get much better video(and audio) and image quality from a mobile or a second-hand camera by a known name.

So why buy what might be called a pro-camera by a Chinese company that literally created a chunky compact and listed it in the DSLR or Mirrorless second of the eBay Digital Camera second?? If you want the same quality as the faux 24MP(really 8MP) Chinese knockoff that tries to look like the homeless cousin of an Olympus, well, why not get an older Olympus or Leica? if it's just for common use a model from 5-8 yrs ago will be cheap enough, look better, and offer all you need. Or, for vlogging, buy any half good compact camera that offers 1080p video quality and image quality doesn't need to be high in the megapixels for it to matter. after all, you cannot see the difference between a 14mp camera and 16 or 18mp camera unless you check the details in depth or if other factors to the camera and sensor have varied too.

An 8-year-old Canon or Nikon DSLR(Digital Single-Lens Reflex) camera will offer you everything you need for fairly good photos, and you can pick from a variety of old and new lenses. And with some older cameras, they're a great cheap option for full frame photography on a budget, or at least good quality images with a fair sized sensor. Unlike the Chinese cameras that get onto ebay, which are very amateurish products that often cost more new than a good cheap camera second hand. And you may see them for 30 pounds if you buy from another person who saw one for 60, they then realised they got screwed on the product and couldn't return it. So the used market on the crappy camera is an option if you buy one.

The Chinese cameras you see on eBay are made to look different to most cameras, they're the ones that don't strictly cross the copyrights of other companies, but those sometimes appear too. A Nikon camera look-a-like with a screw mount for the lens and a battery that barely holds charge. Often the power used in a video will mean you can't use it for vlogging with ease, and the compact Chinese knock-off cameras often run on AA or AAA battery types, meaning you'll need a good set of rechargeables that offer great performance and a battery charger, so now you cost isn't 35 pounds for the compact but 50 including good rechargeable batteries and charger. And some don't accept modern SD(SDHC)cards above 8gig.

So a few drawbacks to a would-be bargain.