I put my mint-condition, three-year-old, ~ 40k-shutter-actuation Nikon D90 back on Craigslist a few days ago. I had put it up perhaps a month and a half earlier but people kept disappearing when I told them the rubber grip was loose in one area. So I fixed that with a new grip and tape from eBay
I was asking $750 for the D90 body and an MB-D80 battery grip. I accepted an offer of $600 for the pair. Original battery and charger included.
I’m happy with the transaction. I used my D90 for three solid years, taking approximately 40,000 photographs with it. That’s about a thousand photos per month. I threw in a $150 part (the MB-D80 portrait/battery grip), but I still got a great value for my initial $880 + $150. I “lost” $430 by selling the pair. That’s $143/year for using the best digital camera I’ve ever owned to take a thousand pictures per month. By picture, that’s $0.01075 (about a penny) per photograph.
This morning, I decided to check Amazon’s used Fuji X100’s and immediately found a deal. $819.95 + $7.99 shipping. The X100 still goes for $1200 new. This used specimen is reportedly in perfect condition. Here’s the ad:
I did have a little scare. A couple hours after placing my order, I went back to my iPhone and noticed an error regarding my order. Whoah. I tried to re-order it immediately, thinking the order was unsuccessful, but that produced further errors. Looking for the unit on my iPad, it and the next-higher-priced used X100 on Amazon were no longer available. I thought someone ordered it moments before I did and that I’d lost it. But I checked my email and found an order confirmation email from Amazon for the X100. Well, I hope that order confirmation is correct, because this was one heck of a deal on a Fuji X100. We’ll see if it comes.
2 September 2012 Update: I put my X100 up for sale on Amazon the other day. $840, plus some accessories added (the wrist strap I got it with, two after market batteries, the wide angle lens thing, the shutter release screw-in button and I think that’s it.) Whoever bought this got one hell of a deal.
Why did I sell it, I’ll ask myself in a few months or more? Because the close focus was crap. At my wife’s recent birthday party, I had more focus trouble with subject sitting near me at the table. Hunt, hunt, hunt. Ugh. Forget this. I want to take face shots of my young daughters and at this field of view, I need to get close to frame them the way I want. If this thing had the focus of my Canon S95, I’d be keeping it.
I’ll wait for the Nikon D600. Selling my X100 and my Apogee Duet 2 (also via Amazon, also sold around the same time), I may have enough right there for the new Nikon. But that’s not why I sold the X100 — I sold it because the focus was screwed. And this was not a fluke — my last X100 was the same way. Dammit. I’m going to miss how silent it was.