It can be a bit of a gamble when buying non OEM bits and bobs for your camera.  Will the lens focus, will the battery be ok, will the flash do the same job, will it be as good quality?  With most 3rd party manufacturers like Hahnel, sigma, tamron etc making decent products you are generally not too scared to purchase items made by these companies.

This is down to reputation and reviews both online & in magazines.  The problem comes when you purchase far eastern 3rd party components off ebay is the poiont at which you get a bit scared and worry about quality and wither it will work.

The Canon BG-E2N for the 20/30/40D ranges from £100-£150 depending on the store which is a fair bit of money to some people.  Hahnel &  Ansmann both make grips and cost about £70-80 again depending on the store but even thats a bit too much for a poor student like me.

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A small search on ebay turned up the Phottix BP-40D Grip for £39.00 posted from Honk Kong Supplies.  Google turned up a few reviews for another phottix grip which did not have replaceable batteries and it was a well liked product so I ordered one and just over a week later it arrived.

The Grip can take 1 or 2 BP511(a) or 6 AA batteries which fit in a small tray and slides into the grip.  The Grip is well made from plastic with the standard extra shutter button and the exposure lock & focus point buttons like on the canon grip.  The grip attaches well to the camera although the slider for screwing it in is a bit flimsy it locks in place with no movement.  There is also a strap attachemnt on the bottom

In use the grip is plesant to hold in in portrait and does not get in the way in landscape orientation although first time uses may find it a bit odd.  There is the bog standard tripod attachement at the bottom and my manfrotto QR plate from the MN410 junior geared head fits the grip better than the camera alone.

Overall this grip is well worth alook at less than 1/2 the price of the canon offering for those that have little money this would seem the obvious route and I have no problems in recomending it.  I also took the oppertunity to buy a couple of phottix bp-511 equivelents to go in the grip and I’ll comment on them later.

My phottix BP-40D battery grip was purchased from Hong Kong Supplies who also sell a really a really cheap WB lens disc which works reall really well

edit - turned up a problem with the Grip - I can’t get 6fps in AI servo only one shot and AI focus. According to the instructions you won’t get full fps with AA batteries in the grip however there is no mention about when using BP511a batteries.  I suspect mine has a fault with it as it would be pretty stupid not to give you the full FPS when you add the grip.

Having contacted the vendor they cannot guarantee that another would give me 6.5fps and I quote

“This is not original Canon grip.
We can not make sure another one will do 6.5fps.
You pay only half of original one and we think that it is worthy for what you pay.
Kindly understand this”

I have emailed Phottix themselves to get an answer.  I suggest you don’t buy from this vendor as they are clearly unwilling to help after you have bought a product.  once I have got more info from Phottix themselves I’ll be leaving feedback accordingly.

Email back from Phottix and its actually the vendor HK supplies.  They have no idea, my advice is to ignore this product if you need 6fps in AI servo mode.  Clearly  a case of too good to be true which is a shame considering the build quality

second update the camera now seems to be working at 6.5fps now so I suspect there is maybe a faulty connection somewhere.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.