The heading says it all, really. Is there one?

Jeremy

RRS only sells via mailorder.

Great products, great service.

Michael

You can sometimes find stuff though ebay or some of the bigger shops, but that would be used.

I have to give their products a big thumbs up. They are much easier to deal with now that they take credit cards. Formerly, if you wanted their products, you had to send a check and send your order by mail. There was no online ordering. Now they have a nice web site and take plastic.

Thanks, Michael. There's nothing quite like handling stuff (particularly quite expensive stuff) yourself before buying it, though, is there?

The consensus here is certainly that their kit is fantastic. I suppose I'll accept the tiny risk that I won't like it, for some reason.

Jeremy

Indeed. And their stuff IS expensive. But I went to a photo show they were at and man, if you pick up their products, you better be prepared to pull out your credit card. They are just beautifully built products. Took me no time to drop $1500 on a Gitzo carbon fiber set of legs, ball head, panno head etc. But as Michael says, the products are great.

RRS is top gun in everything they produce and well worth the extra mortgage to it!

The only UK retailer that I have found to carry anything similar is Warehouse Express (www.warehouseexpress.com) who offer the Kirk range -- I use both Kirk and RRS items, and am happy with both - YMMV.

Sadly, I believe Warehouse Express is an online-only retailer, so handling the bits is difficult. But at least if you have problems, you don't have customs hassle with returns, etc.

Ordering RRS stuff for the UK is doable, but the cost of postage, then VAT and delivery charges on top, can make it an expensive proposition. But as other posters have said, RRS kit is very good, and the pain of a purchase quickly forgotten if the item does what you need it to.

FWIIW I have bought both RRS and Kirk but have favoured Kirk for recent camera 'L" brackets which seem a little better thought out. The shift was triggered by one for my Xpan when the RRS one had a glaring problem only discovered in use. So look carefully at the examples on the respective web sites. RRS do make excellent pano gear!

I'm a relatively poor full-time photography student and bought their BH-55 ballhead from the UK. Horribly expensive after I got stuffed with import duty but it's really paid for itself with time saved and convenience. Their products are beautiful pieces of engineering.

I have bought loads of stuff from RRS, living in the UK. Mostly it has all been very good. The BH55 ballhead is very nice, though the durability of the finish is not as strong as an Arca Swiss B1 QS.
However, and this is a big however, they charge a very large amount for shipping (35.00USD) for what are often small and light components. Even then, they still manage to loose them. Example, I bought an L bracket (for the Canon 1DS MKIII) from them at the end of November. I then sat back and waited two months for this item to arrive in my office in a busy X-ray department of a district general hospital. Everybody who delivers locally knows exactly where my hospital is and I have items delivered all the time by more carriers than you can shake a stick at. Yet, in two months where is my bracket? On the 25th of January it was returned to RRS....apparently, they could not find me. Now I get an email from them telling me that I could have it delivered by UPS rather than USPS, but this will be more expensive again!!!!! As you can imagine, I am not at all happy about this. I do not live in Outer Mongolia. I know that I can post an item to them with Royal Mail Airsure and that it will probably arrive in less than a week and it will have cost me less than half what they charge for their (useless) shipping. I would not mind too much if this was the first time this has happened, but it is not.

I agree delivery can be a problem with RRS

I live about 500 miles north of their office.

Their shipping sucks. I ordered a center column for a Gitzo I bought at RRS the day after at B&H, which is in NY and I'm 3300 miles from them. I got the center column two days before the tripod, 500 miles away.

I also bought a Gitzo LSV tripod with the BH55 head and plates for my 70-200L and 5D.

The set up is impressive, both pieces being very impressively built. However, the BH55 is no pack head. It's very heavy. In fact, the Gitzo LSV with the BH55 and the Gitzo center column are a rather heavy combination. The tripod and center column weight about 4.5 lbs I think, which is really light, but that head feels like a canon ball. They should think about making one from titanium.

Also, as others have pointed out, RRS and Gitzo are very expensive. I too dropped 1575US on my tripod kit. Hopefully it will pay for itself by being trouble free for the next decade.

I am troubled, if true, that the Arca Swiss has a better coating than the RRS head.

actually better is a Burzynski Ballhead, but you need a L plate with it

I thought about getting the RRS BH55, but in the end bought a Markins M20 to go on my gitzo 3530GT legs, together with a Kirk L-plate for my 5d. I've been really happy with the setup so far, and the Markins head is lighter than the RRS I think.

I bought the head and L-plate form the Nikonians european Pro Shop and it was delivered in 2 days from Germany to the UK. I got the Gitzo in the UK (warehouse express I think - next day).

There wasn't much in the cost, but add the import duty and vat to the RRS kit and it soon adds up. Import duty is 3.7% of cost plus postage and then vat at 17.5% on the total! Unless the dolar has weakened against sterling again then the RRS kit will now be very expensive. Also add in about 2.5% to 3% for exchange costs on your credit card.

Unfortunately, your on the wrong side of the pennines, as I work in Leeds, but happy to show you the kit if that would help.

Mike

That's very kind: thanks. I do visit Leeds from time to time - I'll let you know when I'm next there.

Jeremy

There is a way to get around import taxes, etc. If you trust someone living here in the US, send them an international money order, and have them buy the merchandise, and then send it to you in personal mail.

Or I could just rob a bank to get the extra money. It would be equally legal.

Jeremy

It would be no more illegal than flying here and buying it yourself. Or, you could give the person the money as a personal gift. Then that person can buy you a gift with that money. In other words, no one will ever know because it would be quite impossible to prove any wrong doing. I went to Australia a number of years ago. At that time, they had no "Ping Eye 2" gold clubs, and everyone there wanted a set. I bought a used set in the US for 200US and sold them for 650 in Australia. Minus the 30% less for Aussie dollars, I paid for my plane ticket. No one batted an eye.

If you two are in agreement, then why are you arguing?

The federalies will have to storm my compound before I page use tax.

You are confusing the ease of evading your legal obligations with the issue of their existence.

If you import an item which should be subject to import duty and/or VAT, you are obliged to declare the item and pay the taxes, unless you are personally carrying it into the country having been abroad yourself and the item's value is below the appropriate cutoff point.

If your scheme were legal, mail order companies which wanted to develop an international trade would simply set up local sister companies to whom donations of money could be made, which would then buy the items and deliver them with neither donor nor recipient being liable for tax. I suspect it wouldn't work for long.

Most of us drive faster than the speed limit allows us to drive. We don't usually get caught. That doesn't make what we're doing any more lawful.

I'm not being pious about it: like, I suspect, most other people, I have an ambivalent attitude towards minor and apparently victimless infractions of the law if they save me some money. But I have to accept that what I'm doing is not legal and that I will be punished if caught.

Jeremy

Yep, you are. Also note that corporations pass "laws" all the time that contribute to smaller businesses NOT being able to compete, which in itself should be against the law--see Microsoft anti-trust law suit. That's why so many peple rip off MS when they can because they see a company that has no competition and can do what ever it wants and charge whatever it wants. At least in the EU they saw through this MS bullshit and convicted them.

I knew I should have stated that if you do this on a personal basis, then there is no harm. It's mass bypassing of the import tariffs that are targeted by this type of law. If you make a copy of any music even for your own use, you are technically breaking the law. But I'm not going to let that infraction keep me from putting all my CDs on a 8GB sd card instead of carrying 140CDs around in my car only to have some idiot steal them all. Some laws become absurd when you apply them to all peple all the time no matter what. If you need a specific piece of hardware to compete and it's out of price simply because of the world's obsession with F--up capitalist economic laws, then I saw you are more than justified in getting around them any way you can. After all, capitalism is solely based on self interest.

Jeremy,

I agree with you - the law in the UK is quite clear, although many of the Hong Kong based suppliers seem to avoid their client paying import duty by describing goods as a gift...

Mike