Shortage of Lee product.

[GrahamS]

Hey all.
Anyone have any idea as to why Lee products are hard to come by, sent an email off to Vanbar and they said they have 40 units of the holder on order but no ETA from the manufacturer. Studio direct are out as well, seems to be a world wide shortage of all Lee products atm. I thought about the Cokin Z-Pro but I'd much rather have the Lee. Is it just that they are so popular the factory can't keep up with demand or has anyone heard of another reason.
Cheers for any insight.

[peterb666]

There are problems with the supply of Cokin Z-Pro too. I gave up after around 3 months on order and making do with my P-series stuff.

[I @ M]

Maxwells are looking at early June for delivery of Cokin gear, I have a bit of stuff on back order with them. Lee are snowed under with demand for the 14-24 Nikon holder kit so i reckon that is slowing the rest of their production up.

[swifty]

There are problems with the supply of Cokin Z-Pro too. I gave up after around 3 months on order and making do with my P-series stuff.

Yea I know. My BH order is held up cos I'm waiting on the Cokin Z-Pro

[darkc]

I don't know why they don't just expand their manufacturing? You may have already looked into this but have you tried a UK shop like Robert White? I have ordered Lee stuff from them on numerous occasions and while there seems to always be a wait I have had better success than any Aus retailer and much cheaper.

[ricktas]

I don't know why they don't just expand their manufacturing? You may have already looked into this but have you tried a UK shop like Robert White? I have ordered Lee stuff from them on numerous occasions and while there seems to always be a wait I have had better success than any Aus retailer and much cheaper.

A lot of these are manufactured in Japan, and guess what, many of the manufacturing plants are/were in the earthquake and tsunami zone, thus manufacturing has ceased at present, completely!

[NGP]

I got to correct Rick here.. Lee filters are primarily manufactured in the UK and Cokin filters in France.. not sure what the hold up is with Lee filters but Cokin has always been bad with manufacturing and delays anything up to 6 months and more are common.. that's why we had stopped stocking Cokin products some time ago, it was just too much of a pain in the backside to get stock and now only sell them on customers request if stock is available from Maxwell..

[Milbs1]

Lee are notoriously bad, I had the same problems when I ordered my filters in Feb.
Also try Teamworkphoto (http://www.teamworkphoto.co.uk) I ordered from them in the end...got the holder but went with the Hitech filters as I didn't want to wait!

[davearnold]

I am about to enter the world of filters, have ordered some cheap ebay ones to get used to using them, work out colours I like etc. and was wondering where to get the "good" ones from later, some my questions have been answered here.

Thanks

[ricktas]

I got to correct Rick here.. Lee filters are primarily manufactured in the UK and Cokin filters in France.. not sure what the hold up is with Lee filters but Cokin has always been bad with manufacturing and delays anything up to 6 months and more are common.. that's why we had stopped stocking Cokin products some time ago, it was just too much of a pain in the backside to get stock and now only sell them on customers request if stock is available from Maxwell..

Yep, but where do Lee and Cokin source their supplies from, like dies for the plastics etc? At work we purchase a product manufactured in Mexico, but one of the core part of that product was produced inside the nuclear zone, and thus, supplies have dried up. I think the world will be seeing the effect of the nuclear zone in Japan for quite some time and often in ways that we don't necessarily link to the Japanese disaster.