Visiting BH

We’re back home from two very intense weeks.
It all started out at Photoshop World where I taught several demos and seminars and did a lot of demoing for Manfrotto (Elinchrom) and Expo imaging (the flash bender).

After Photoshopworld we travelled to New York where I taught a 2 hour seminar about inspiration, reaction and getting the shot. It was a huge success, the seminar was recorded and will be online in a few weeks.

Before the seminar I got a nice “VIP” tour of B&H showing the different departments and explaining the vision and service/products that made B&H the store it is today. In this blogpost my opinions of the tour and B&H.

Let’s start off by saying that I never saw a store that is nearly as impressive as B&H.
You really feel that they have everything, and even some gear you never ever heard off, wandering through B&H you feel like you’re on an expedition, discovering new stuff and constantly feeling the need to discover even more.

Than when you find something you want to buy the following surprise is presented. With B&H you don’t just take your product with you…. no…. you get to see your product, you can feel it and if you like what you see/feel it is put into a basket and transported through the shop towards the “collecting” point. You will get a receipt and you’re off to the next part of your “expedition”. When you buy another product the same thing happens. When you’re done you pay and you get a nice bag with all your products.

This is not only handy for the customer (which doesn’t have to drag all their new gear through the store) but also profitable for B&H I think :-), I think a lot of customers will be buying more than they intended because it’s all so easy, and again they have so many goodies, it’s very tempting to just keep on buying.

The transportation system is very efficient by the way, were in normal situations the system would just run all day, with the B&H system there are sensors mounted on the system that will “sense” a new basket coming and will only then activate the rollers, this will without a doubt be a huge saving on energy but also on the sound level.

To label B&H as a camera store is a bit of an understatement.
They have a huge assortment of other gear. If you’re working in music or video editing for example you can even work on several workstations that are setup in the store and work on your own files (or create files on the spot) and see how the hardware/software operates and make the right decision for your situation. The stations are standing places and I understand why, it’s really possible to edit a whole movie on the stations, including creating a soundtrack and doing the video, I think that when there would be chairs (which there were in the past) people would be crowding the stations all day.

Recently B&H also added a “studio” for some serious broadcast material. Seeing this was very impressive, people from TV stations can create their setup here and test out how it works and again buy what really fits their situation.

What I also found interesting was the mic room. I love the vintage mics and in the mic room there were a lot of different mics, a real treat if you’re looking for a mic but are wondering which one sounds best. The mic room is sound proof and you can try out whatever mic you are interested in. Throughout B&H it really dawned to me that the fun thing about B&H is that they are showing mics/headphones/cameras in the below 100.00 range next to gear costing 10-20x more, and you can test it all, now that makes live a lot easier. I’ve been in a lot of stores where you can test product one, but not the competing product or in another price range. The selection B&H shows you really makes choosing a breeze (or not because there really is a lot of choice).

After the sound and video it was time for the lighting gear. B&H has a nice selection of different brands including Elinchrom of course, and again you can touch and see the products before you buy.

Moving towards the camera department is a really nice experience.
For many people it’s very hard to determine which camera to buy, especially now a days with all the cameras being better and better and the gaps between the different brands slowly closing it can be a real problem to find the camera that really fits your needs. The camera department is containing several islands with cameras which you can pick up and try and test with, but more importantly the people selling the cameras are people that are also shooting themselves, and most importantly they do not get a commission to sell you a certain brand (they can get fired for that), meaning you will really get a professional opinion on which camera fits you, and of course I tried that……

I was looking for a nice new Point and Shoot camera, I did not want something that was too obvious, but also did not want something that looked too much as a Point and Shoot, in other words I needed a fun camera, but I don’t want a bad image quality of course. I first asked about Sony and Nikon but was almost immediately steered towards the Fuji camera, and they were right this was already the camera I had in mind after some research, and they steered me for the right reasons also. The only camera I was also thinking about was the new Canon PowerShot G1 X Digital Camera but I also mentioned that this one actually was out of my price range for the P&S purposes. Of course I bought the Fujifilm X10 Digital Camera (Black) and after a few days of use I can’t be more happy with it, will do a review later.

For me B&H has been a reliable source of some of my gear for many years, actually they send me some filters a few years ago that I could not find anywhere else. Now one might think that because B&H is located in the states it’s not possible to order from them, but you will be pleased to learn that B&H delivers worldwide and even has a calculation module installed so you can see the taxes, shipping, duties etc. mentioned before you press the “final” button.

Make sure to check out their site at http://www.bhphotovideo.com/  and when you’re in New York… B&H is without a doubt one of the main attractions on the list of every photographer that visits the area, it’s simply an awesome store.