fake Nikon MH-25

[richardHaw]

http://richardhaw.com/2018/01/25/warning-fake-nikon-mh-25/

a look inside the original one and a bootleg 

[Akira]

Well written, Rick!

[armando_m]

it is amazing how many fake things they come up with

[David H. Hartman]

Richard,

Thanks for the heads up. I'm sure I wouldn't buy a fake MH-25 new but I might be in a hurry and buy a used fake off eBay. I need a second charger to carry with me.

I bought a knockoff beauty dish from eBay. It's not a cheap one per say but it has an adapter that doesn't locate the flash tube correctly for my Norman LH-2000 heads so it really isn't a beauty dish. Stupid me! I thought though inattention that I was buying a used Norman beauty dish.

Thanks again,

Dave

[Jacques Pochoy]

Great to know ! Thanks a lot Richard... Now I'll look at the slider and such details and think twice before buying cheap things.
 
Not that I do that usually, I rely on the expertise of my brick and mortar Nikon shop who has a small repair lab with a guy that open Nikon lenses and is allowed by Nikon to put back the yellow paint marks on some screws  He also has a "junk" cupboard and found me a brand new AI ring for my 135mm/2.8 Q, ring salvaged (I guess) from a broken lens. I've known those guys for more the twenty years and trust them.
Each old lenses I buy at the Bièvres photo fair are checked and cleaned by them, otherwise I buy new on the shelf products (when I can) I'm glad to live in a city that can allow such services !

[Matthew Currie]

Dave, I would suggest that if you want a cheap spare charger you get an honestly cheap one like the Watson from B&H.  I got one of those when my Nikon MH-24 charger died, and it's functional enough.  It takes multiple adapters, including one for EN-EL15,  and has a USB output.   Cheap third party not pretending to be anything else.

[richardHaw]

exactly. 3rd party doesnt mean bootleg

[Øivind Tøien]

Those Watson changers are cheap, and have the convenience of being compact and with inexpensive adapters from B&H, but on my last trip out of the US, I regretted relying on one for my AW1 (+D5100 which I did not use much), as it quickly died, and cost me a new extra Nikon charger for the AW1. I eventually got a warranty replacement after my return to the US, but the Watson has only two terminals, so it is a simple charger with just voltage cutoff, and no connection to whatever smart circuitry may exist in the battery for distributing charge between the cells and measuring battery state. It might have just been a coincidence, but one of my EN-EL15 broke (one of the cells went bad) shortly after I did a single test charge with the Watson (I normally use the original Nikon charger); that battery was only about a year old. So the Watson is now retired to only be a backup charger for emergencies (the adapters are convenient in that respect).

[Akira]

So far as the battery-related equipments are concerned, I try to stay with the genuine ones.

[Les Olson]

The problem is how to know that a product is counterfeit. Buying from an authorised retailer is not foolproof, because counterfeit goods can easily get into the official supply chain (about 2% of pharmaceuticals supplied by bricks and mortar pharmacies and hospitals in the US are counterfeit, and the pharmaceutical supply chain is highly regulated and relatively secure).

Several aspects of Nikon's business practices make it easier for counterfeiters to deceive consumers.  One is price gouging for small items ($579 for the lens hood for the 180-400!), so that the consumer has no reason to be suspicious when they are offered an item at a very low price.  Another is charging different prices for the same item in different regions, so that there are always parallel imported (AKA grey market) items in the market, so people get used to buying from unofficial sources.  And a third is that after years of Nikon deliberately deceiving consumers about parallel imported products, including dark hints that we should hear "grey market" and think "counterfeit", they cannot talk about counterfeits and be trusted.

[pluton]

The problem is how to know that a product is counterfeit. Buying from an authorised retailer is not foolproof, because counterfeit goods can easily get into the official supply chain (about 2% of pharmaceuticals supplied by bricks and mortar pharmacies and hospitals in the US are counterfeit, and the pharmaceutical supply chain is highly regulated and relatively secure).

As I understand the photo industry in the USA, if the retailer buys Nikon goods only from Nikon, there won't be any counterfeits.  It's when the retailer goes outside the official distributor to get what appear to be name-brand goods for less money that counterfeits can be introduced into the supply chain.

Several aspects of Nikon's business practices make it easier for counterfeiters to deceive consumers.  One is price gouging for small items ($579 for the lens hood for the 180-400!), so that the consumer has no reason to be suspicious when they are offered an item at a very low price.  Another is charging different prices for the same item in different regions, so that there are always parallel imported (AKA grey market) items in the market, so people get used to buying from unofficial sources.  And a third is that after years of Nikon deliberately deceiving consumers about parallel imported products, including dark hints that we should hear "grey market" and think "counterfeit", they cannot talk about counterfeits and be trusted.

I agree that Nikon and other companies gouge on some items. The inflated official price might actually help you spot counterfeits because they are 'impossibly cheap'.

[Les Olson]

As I understand the photo industry in the USA, if the retailer buys Nikon goods only from Nikon, there won't be any counterfeits. 
I agree that Nikon and other companies gouge on some items. The inflated official price might actually help you spot counterfeits because they are 'impossibly cheap'.

How do you know where the retailer got their supplies?  And what is to stop someone at the warehouse, or the shipping company, stealing the genuine items and substituting counterfeits so there is no discrepancy in the item count?  That is what happens with pharmaceuticals.  It happens often enough that hospital pharmacies have spectrophotometers, because the best way to detect fakes is by colour, either of the tablet or capsule, or the labelling on the box or vial.

One problem with "impossibly cheap" prices is that Nikon is charging so much for a few grams of injection-molded plastic that in those cases no price is impossibly cheap.  Again, this is the same with pharmaceuticals: the hepatitis C drug sofosbuvir costs US$84,000 for the 12-week course.  That course costs US$130 to manufacture.  (And total development costs were US$300M, which were recouped in the first two weeks of sales).   

Another problem with "impossibly cheap" prices is that counterfeiters don't want to sell their product really cheap: the higher the price the better for them.  So if consumers get suspicious if the price is too low, that is easy to fix.

[richardHaw]

by the way, David is an electronics engineer with Panasonic so i trust him with this. he said that the fake one lacked safety features and that the power is underspec 

[David H. Hartman]

So far as the battery-related equipments are concerned, I try to stay with the genuine ones.

I might have mentioned this before; I hope not in this thread. I have a Watson battery pack that came with my D800. It has giving me no problems. I would not have bought it but since it was tossed in I use it. I've thought about buying a Watson charger but I also wonder about what the circuit inside is like so I never have.

Dave

[Akira]

I might have mentioned this before; I hope not in this thread. I have a Watson battery pack that came with my D800. It has giving me no problems. I would not have bought it but since it was tossed in I use it. I've thought about buying a Watson charger but I also wonder about what the circuit inside is like so I never have.

Dave

As Rick indicated, there is clear difference between the third party and the fake, at least in terms of their intention.  If your third party battery is working without any problem, that is fine.  The problem is, when the battery would fail, third party or fake, the camera would not be treated under warranty.