The kindness of strangers, the perils of shipping

Last week I was poking around Craigslist looking for some flashes to augment my current one flash. I stumbled across a pair of Nikon SB-28s for $35 each. I know I shoot Canon but since these would be off camera, the brand doesn't matter. If you follow Strobist at all and have been out to ebay, those things normally go for around $100. I emailed the person, they were in the Spokane area, to see if she'd be willing to ship. Unfortunately I was too late, they were snapped up by locals.

So I continued my search. A few days later I found a gentleman in Oregon selling an old film Canon with a 540EZ Speedlite. I shot him an email and no one was interested and they were still for sale. He was asking $50 for the set. I asked him if he'd take $50 shipped for just the flash and he accepted. We discussed what I was after as he had some other equipment. I sent him the money and began the wait.

Saturday was the glorious day. I opened the mailbox and saw the key to the parcel mailbox. Woo hoo! I grabbed the box. It was quite large for only having a single flash in it. I went inside and immeadiately tore it open. Then I was confused. I found the flash. I also found a book on lighting for products. There was another item too... it turned out to be a 430EZ Speedlite. I got two flashes and a book for $50. That's an amazing deal. The flashes showed some wear on their cases but otherwise looked great. LCDs intact, etc.

I grabbed some batteries and tossed them into the flashes to test them. The 430 fired off, no problem, the zoom motor worked, everything was great. I grabbed the 540, inserted the batteries. Nothing, no dice, the flash wouldn't even power up. This is the one that's supposed to be working according to the Craigslist add. Damn! I tried the batteries a few more times, no dice, I did research online. I just couldn't seem to get it to power up.

So now I have a 430EZ that works great and a failed 540EZ. I emailed the guy who sold them to me. Hopefully he insured the package or there is some trick to this older flash to get it going. However, I don't feel ripped off, why would this guy send me a second, working flash if he was trying to dump crap on me, and why include the book. A local used camera shop has 430EZs for ~$50 so if I can get the 540 working too I made out like a bandit. We'll see what happens.