For all the hate we direct towards “the man”, sometimes the little guy is just as bad. When I e-mailed Amazon last week about my issue with the 35L they sent me, I did not expect them to do anything about it but they surprised me by refunding 20% of my purchase price. At that time I thought my luck was rolling because a week prior to that I e-mailed Radio Poppers about an issue I was having with my transmitter. The radio popper unit has plastic “stoppers” after the hotshoe mount to prevent the unit from coming off after you slide it in. Well, my stopers got pushed in and the thin plastic that connects them began to show fatigue which made it impossible for the RP to stay mounted to my hot shoe. To remedy this problem, I used a piece of gaffers over the stoppers to thicken the “hook” part. This worked for a while until the screw on the hotshoe somehow got stripped and the unit stopped making contact during a shoot. Yikes, right?
Phi, I am sorry to hear that your JrX transmitter is having some issues. Rather than trying to rig the transmitter with a temporary fix, I am just going to replace your unit with a new one. Expect an email shortly from admin with further details.
So I e-mailed RP asking about replacement parts and to my surprise they told me that they’d fix it. Awesome right? 
Nope. I sent the unit in this week and it arrived at RP today and instead of “replacing [my] unit with a new one” they want to charge me $20. Talk about a bait and switch. 
Honestly, I don’t mind paying to have it fixed. I initially e-mailed asking for prices and availability of replacement parts but to say they are going to replace it and then turn around and say they aren’t is pretty grimey in my book.
Hello Phi,This is in regards to your RM 13xxx. We have received your JrX Transmitter and in preparation for repair we found that the damage on the bottom part of the JrX Transmitter is not from typical use, as one “stop” is torn off and missing, and the other is bent down. We can repair your loose screws under warranty, free of charge. However if you would like the bottom part of your JrX Transmitter case replaced so that the unit is able to stay on your camera’s hotshoe more securely the repair fee will be $20.00
At this point, I don’t even think I can recommend RPs to people anymore. The transmitter hotshoe design is awful and they obviously do not even stand by their product. I’m going to pay to get it fixed (mainly for resale reasons) but I don’t see how this issue isn’t going to happen again; the design is just not durable in my opinion.
A couple weeks ago I took my Olympus 28mm f/2.8 and it served me well for landscape photography (pictures of that trip coming soon!). I couldn’t help but feel like a 24mm would serve me a little better so I created an eBay search to try to get a version of this lens for cheap. 
. I was planning on trying to get one for around $70 but gave in but when I saw this SC for $130 shipped (everything at the time had bids up to $100 already, even on single-coated versions). It arrived today and the glass is near mint and the body is in pretty good condition despite what the auction said so I am pretty happy. 
I am always a little impressed when I see how small Olympus was able to design these OM lenses. It’s pretty interesting to see how it all packs so tidily into the leather case. Compactness was definitely the goal with OM and it shows. It’s too bad no one is currently in the same mindset.
It’s been a long time but I’ve finally reacquired the Canon 35mm f/1.4L. I can’t even remember my reasoning for selling it; the 20mm was one of my most used lenses on 1.6x crop which has an effective focal length at 32mm. Logically, this would mean that when I upgraded to full frame the 35L should have been one of my most used lenses but I ended up selling it and never replacing it for whatever reason. Fortunately I found one on Amazon Warehouse deals for $1290 and couldn’t pass up the opportunity to “cheaply” repurchase this lens. I put cheaply in quotes because the price on this lens went from ~1200 to ~1400 since I sold it. Unfortunately when the lens arrived it was missing some accessories but Amazon is making up for it! 
Based on the condition in which the Canon EF 35mm Lens arrived, we’d like to offer you a refund of 20% of the purchase price of this item, of $256. 20, if you are interested in keeping it. If this is acceptable, please let us know.
So overall I am pretty excited to get this back in my hands. I’ve heard a lot of bad stories about buying open box stuff on Amazon Warehouse deals but so far everything seems fine. I’m going to test the lens for a couple days to make sure the person who returned it didn’t have a good reason and then I’ll probably take Amazon up on their refund offer.