China is a Photographer's Paradise, in more ways than one.

Other than having a lot of subjects to take pictures of, the local camera industry is pretty booming! There is a 7 story building, filled with camera gear! New and used. Check out this link for the address and other details. http://www.photo.net.ph/blogalicious/main/where-to-buy-your-cameras-gear-and-photographic-equiptment-in-shanghai-china/ The building is called Xing Guan Photography Equipment Building. It's at the corner of Luban Road and Xietu Road. Exit the Luban Road metro station at exit #1 and turn left. Keep walking for about a block and you can't miss it!

It is pretty awesome. The first two floor sells new cameras and lenses. All the big brands are there. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, Olympus, Panasonic. 2nd floor are bags, tripods and accessories such as grips and filters. Higher floors included used gear, professional lighting, soft boxes, and even photoshop learning centers!! The used stores are real candy stores. They have everything under the sun. 1930's original Leica's, TLR Rolleis, large format accordion style cameras, an array of medium format systems, simply a ton of used and rare items for sale. Prices aren't cheap, they are subject to haggling, but the selection is amazing. This is a must see for any camera enthusiast coming to Shanghai. 

I haven't done much shopping in Shanghai overall, but I've scored quite a bit of camera gear so far. I bought 2 camera straps off of taobao.com, which is like a chinese ebay only way better (no auctions, store fronts, all purchases are escrow), as well as a Pentax K -> EOS AF confirm adapter. Today, at the Xing Guan building, I bought a self-portrait lens+mirror for my fuji instax 7 camera for $9, a Benro carbon fiber tripod with ball head, and 6 rolls of black and white 120 medium format film for about $7. Awesome!

I'm pretty happy about the Benro tripod. The brand is a Chinese copy of the Gitzo high end tripods. The build quality of Benro is superb, all the knobs feel velvety smooth and the carbon fiber legs feel very solid and high quality. It is fairly light for a medium sized tripod. And it includes a fairly decent ball head as well. It can hold my 5D2 with no issues at all. All for $175CAD. Pretty awesome I think! 

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