BG-E11 grip for 5D3 is out

[anakha]

Canonrumors.com reports that the BGE-11 grip for the 5D3 is now available for purchase, citing customers' in possession of them in Australia and the UK.

I checked a few stores online this morning to see if it was widely available - alas that doesn't appear to be the case.

Camerapro.net.au staff told me today that they shipped their first order of BG-E11s to pre-ordered customers on Thursday and Friday of this week, so perhaps a few of those lucky souls received theirs on Friday in the mail. Price was $355 + postage, etc.

Unfortunately, they are out of stock till their new delivery due later next week.

JBhifi don't even have the model in their database, Teds wants $409.

If you've received your BG-E11 already, can you let us know from where you purchased it. What are your thoughts?

Anakha

[patrickv]

What kind of value does a grip bring? It seems a lot to pay for what it does. Maybe I have missed something, could you please enlighten me?

[JM Tran]

What kind of value does a grip bring? It seems a lot to pay for what it does. Maybe I have missed something, could you please enlighten me?

Oh god......

[anakha]

Patrick,

I assume that you are not trolling and are genuinely interested in an answer to your question.

A grip provides a number of advantages. It is expensive to purchase a Canon grip as opposed to a third-party compatible / knock-off (depending on your perspective). You could say the same about lenses, flashes or any other piece of Canon equipment.

First, a grip provides double the battery life as you can insert two LP-E6s into the BG-E11, thus taking pictures for longer without interruption.

Second, a grip provides an ergonomic benefit. Instead of having to curl my hand over to take shots in portrait format (as opposed to landscape format), I can keep my hand in the same, more ergonomically comfortable, position by using a grip when the camera is taking shots in either format.

I'll leave it to other members to add additional benefits they perceive arise out of having a grip.

Anakha

What kind of value does a grip bring? It seems a lot to pay for what it does. Maybe I have missed something, could you please enlighten me?

[Bennymiata]

Or you can save yourself a lot of money and get one of these http://www.ebay.com/itm/PRE-ORDER-Pi...item20c5ac9e08

[patrickv]

Thanks Anakha
$400 seems like a complete rip off though, its the price of a brand new APS-C back up camera body (the 1100D), this is a lot of money for a piece of plastic with a couple buttons and a battery container.

JM Tran why are you being so rude?

[JM Tran]

Thanks Anakha
$400 seems like a complete rip off though, its the price of a brand new APS-C back up camera body (the 1100D), this is a lot of money for a piece of plastic with a couple buttons and a battery container.

JM Tran why are you being so rude?

Oh I am not being rude, but merely curious - as I recalled from your previous posts in other threads that you have been in photography for a long time now - so it seems a little strange that you would need to question the values and usage of a battery grip, if you had been in photography for that long - you would already know.

Not sure if you are trolling, or I just happened to catch you out on something? Interesting. The above response I just quoted is quite suspect too.

[patrickv]

It depends what you call "being in photography".
Let me give you a bit of background. When I was a kid, my family had no extra cash. We weren't poor, but all the extra money was spent on travel, not material goods. I had a $15 point and shoot camera. It was cool. It had two modes: 100 ISO and 400 ISO. It took two AA batteries to advance the film itself. At school I studied history of art and I was lucky enough to have access to a practically abandoned photo lab, so I was able to buy and process some Ilford and Tri-X film. My parents believed that I should learn early to take care of my money so I helped at the food market on weekends to earn money, which among other things allowed me to buy and process about two rolls of film a month.

Anyway, I did a lot of photo as a teenager. I don't know where it's all kept now, but damn it was fun. I was a bit frustrating though, because I only had a crap camera, and sometimes negatives had to sit for months in a box waiting for cash to be able to process them. Every now and then I was able to borrow some friends' cameras and it was pretty cool. My parents divorced, my Mum remarried and the new guy, who is a fantastic person, owned a Canon EOS 500. He let me use it every now and then, but unfortunately we had a robbery and it was stolen.

My best photography experience was a travel with my father and sister to see our uncle in South Africa. We could do it because as he was very rich, we just had to get some cheap airplane tickets to Johannesburg and he took care of all the rest. He took us to a two week trip in the Kruger Park (a 400x80km natural reserve). He lent me his SLR camera. It was fantastic, with full manual controls. He had a normal lens, and a telephoto lens. I managed to take a magical photo against the sunset with two silhouettes: a big elephant and a baby elephant behind holding its tail. The zebras and the lions were pretty cool too. My uncle had given me ten rolls of colour Velvia (!) film so I could practically shoot a whole roll a day!!

Over the years I learned about the photo basics, such as rule of thirds, shutter speed, depth of field, using a flash during the day to fill shadows, pushing film from 400 ISO to 1600 ISO by underexposing and then processing longer, and lots of other little things. It was very tedious, as I had a very limited number of shots and only rarely had access to a manual camera.

During most of my twenties I experimented a lot with building companies and stuff, so I never had the spare cash for photography and was way too busy doing other stuff anyway. It always was in my radar and I was hoping to some day get to the point where I could revisit this hobby. I did own a used $50 P&S digital camera, but it was so crappy it didn't make me want to use it a lot. It took about three seconds between button press and actual activation, it had a 2MP sensor, vastly inferior to just about any phone camera, a 64MB memory card, took AA batteries and drained them within hours. It was so crazy on batteries that rechargeable ones didn't give enough power...

In 2009 I went out of business. Since then I have been working on getting out of debt. Now it's all OK, I can easily cover my living expenses, and I even have a bit of extra cash. I figured OK I never owned a car, it might be time since I'm over 30. I decided that instead, buying some photography equipment and a cheap scooter would make me a lot happier so I went for that. I bought a first DSLR and I love it. I then went for a prime lens, another DSLR and a couple other lenses. After all these years, I have at last been able to use a real camera ( = with full manual controls) on a consistent basis, with the ability to take a lot of shots since it's digital.

So yeah, I'm half beginner and half not beginner, depending on what part of photography we are talking about, because my experience is very fragmentated and unusual. I'm a very unusual person anyway...

[patrickv]

I recently did an action shoot with a 70-200 f/2.8 that a friend lent me on my 7D (love the 112-320 equiv. reach of this camera!!). Handheld portrait orientation was really tough, and even with the monopod it was still kind of inconvenient. When it's with a light lens (I own primes such as ef100mm, ef50mm and so on) the weight isn't a problem.

So I ordered a BG-E7 and received it today. I will post about it after testing it

I'm kind of surprised nobody said it was with a really heavy lens that it came it handy...

[anakha]

Even with a monopod, I find that the grip helps when in portrait orientation by preventing the need to twist my wrist of my right hand over the top of the body so as to depress the shutter. After taking family portraits for two hours on the weekend, I am glad to have it. I just wish that RRS, etc would hurry up and release their L-Plates for the camera with grip (manufacturing takes 4-5 weeks apparently).

Anakha