The virtues of cheap gear.

Tonight I went out to take some photos of a car cruise a mate of mine was running. As usual I was running a bit late, but our plan had been to catch the tail end of the cruise and then head off to take some long exposure shots.

When we caught up with the crew, I naturally set up and started shooting. Now, when I'm shooting with a tripod, I always use a remote control, and for the last 3 years or so, that has been an eBay sourced Aputure remote. I've previously had to fix a dodgy cable, after about the 6th late night photo mission. Since then, I've been trouble free, until tonight.



After about 5 photos, the remote stopped telling the camera to close the shutter. This is again something that I may be able to fix, but maybe not. After initially kicking myself for not having a genuine Canon remote, I had a bit more of a think.

I've owned that remote for about 3 years now, it's only let me down once before today, and I was able to fix that myself for free, there's no guarantee the Canon would not have done the same thing, as the failure was a break in one of the wires inside the cable to the camera, and probably as much due to my handling as it was to the cheap cable used.



I now find myself faced with the decision of whether to spend $300 on a genuine Canon item, $70 on a pair of replacement eBay units, so that if one breaks, I can keep shooting, or just to repair the one I have.

At the moment I'm leaning towards the second option, while attempting to repair the old unit as another spare.

(updated the morning after: I just had a closer look at the remote, and the button was stuck down. After a firm smack, the button released, and the remote works as normal now. However, I'm still thinking about buying spares, just in case.)