Shopping Advice

[MarkBarbieri]

Where do you shop for camera gear? This question comes up fairly frequently in various forms. We are down to a trivial number of local camera stores (and I live in a metro area of over 4 million people), so I buy almost everything online.

My preferred online retailers for camera gear are B&H and Amazon. I've also heard nothing but good things about Adorama and Calumet. I'm sure that there are many others, but I don't know them very well.

Sadly, there are a lot of scammy camera gear companies online. My favorite way to check out a company I know little about is to go to ResellerRatings. You can read comments about a company and check its rating. If you can't find an online camera company on ResellerRatings, be very cautious.

A good way to save money on gear is to buy it used. Some camera stores also sell used equipment, like B&H's Used Equipment section. KEH is a very well known used camera store that has a very good reputation. Craigslist and eBay are also options, but you need to be careful shopping on a site like that. You can also buy and sell gear on a lot of photography websites. FredMiranda has a trading forum. For people that want to buy locally, many local photography forums have buy/sell forums, like this one on Texas Photo Forum.

If you buy camera gear at a big box store like Best Buy, be careful about getting advice from the sales staff. They often know extremely little about photography or camera equipment. Sadly, this can even be true at some camera stores, but that is less often the case.

In the specialty niche of photo paper, I love shopping with Shades of Paper. They have very competitive prices (if you call them, they can often beat their online advertised prices) and are extremely helpful in advising me on the phone.

There are scads of places to get your prints made online. MPix seems to be the dominant player in the market for quality photos. BayPhoto also has a great reputation, but caters more to the high end. I have never ordered an online book, but there are a lot of companies catering that market as well.

One area that has gotten really competitive is shipping. Amazon has had their Prime shipping for a while. It costs $79/year and gives you free 2-day shipping and $4 overnight shipping on everything they sell. B&H gives free shipping to NAPP members. I think that I paid for my NAPP membership on shipping savings alone this year. A group of online merchants have organized something called ShopRunner to offer something like Amazon Prime for a large number of online sites. I didn't see any photo related sites on the list, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some get added.

It is common to see discount codes for photography related items. This is especially true for software but sometimes true for hardware as well. They are often given out on blogs like Scott Kelby's or David Ziser's (20% off of Nik software with the code DZISER).

You can also get substantial discounts if you are a member of some organizations. Our local photo club often gets discounts to local seminars. NAPP members have several pages worth of discounts available to them.

So what is your shopping advice? Any stores that you recommend? Ways to avoid getting scammed? Places to find great deals?

 

[NateNLogansDad]

I just wanted to throw one more thing out there for consideration, the return policy. places like best buy will charge you a 20% restocking fee for electronics, even if its an open box item which means someone else may have already returned it. I ordered a lens from B&H yesterday and with standard shipping, it should be in tomorrow. While looking at the listing, I noticed that I could save a good amount on a used lens in mint condition. I hesitated for a minute but talked to a salesman and he told me there's a full money back policy for any reason as long as it's returned within 15 days of it getting to my house (minus shipping.) So far I'm pretty impressed, I'll post back after all is said and done.

 

[annnewjerz]

I just wanted to throw one more thing out there for consideration, the return policy. places like best buy will charge you a 20% restocking fee for electronics, even if its an open box item which means someone else may have already returned it. I ordered a lens from B&H yesterday and with standard shipping, it should be in tomorrow. While looking at the listing, I noticed that I could save a good amount on a used lens in mint condition. I hesitated for a minute but talked to a salesman and he told me there's a full money back policy for any reason as long as it's returned within 15 days of it getting to my house (minus shipping.) So far I'm pretty impressed, I'll post back after all is said and done.

What'd ya get?

My shopping advice would to not be afraid to buy used...you can get some REALLY good deals on otherwise expensive lenses. In December I got a very nice used Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 that was going on most places like e-bay and Craig's List for $1900+ for only $1650 through a local seller, as well as a used Nikon 85 f/1.8 that normally goes for about $350 for only $250ish inclusive of shipping through an e-bay auction. As long as you know what to look for and what a good deal is, you can end up with some pretty significant savings.

Also, when you are shopping online for new gear, research a handful of reputable sites to get a general ballpark for what the price of the item will be and then search for money-back offers, coupon codes, sales, etc. to see what you can get the price down to. When using Bing.com when they were still doing cash-back, I got 11% cashback on a lens purchase, which ended up being around $50 cheaper than anywhere else at the time. It all adds up!

 

[Experiment_626]

I know there's an element of gambling to it, but I think it's an excellent idea to buy camera bodies used these days, after the body has been on the market for a while. Camera bodies are like cars these days -- with the constant advancement in technology, they will only depreciate. Better to let someone else buy new and take the bigger hit to the wallet. I got my D300 nearly two years ago, when it was still being sold new in stores. We got it with a Sigma 18-200 OS lens (which my wife uses with her D70) for $1100, and it had fewer than 1200 actuations. We got it from eBay, but there are, as Mark pointed out, plenty of other places you can shop for used cameras that might be less of a gamble. It makes perfect sense to me -- unless you're making a significant chunk of your income from photography and you can justify buying new because you need the best and you need it now, your camera body is not an investment because it will not go up in value.

 

[NateNLogansDad]

sigma 18-250 os I hate changing lenses at the parks! Now I'll be down to that and the 35 1.8

 

[NateNLogansDad]

double post

 

[manning]

I just bought a scanner from BH photo today. Their website over the last few weeks showed it discontinue, then available to availabe w/ price of 169 free shipping and 159 + shipping.

Last night I decided to buy at 169. I called 2 minutes too late (closed) and had to place the order today and got it for.......149 + free shipping.!!

 

[WDWFigment]

What'd ya get?

My shopping advice would to not be afraid to buy used...you can get some REALLY good deals on otherwise expensive lenses. In December I got a very nice used Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 that was going on most places like e-bay and Craig's List for $1900+ for only $1650 through a local seller, as well as a used Nikon 85 f/1.8 that normally goes for about $350 for only $250ish inclusive of shipping through an e-bay auction. As long as you know what to look for and what a good deal is, you can end up with some pretty significant savings.

Also, when you are shopping online for new gear, research a handful of reputable sites to get a general ballpark for what the price of the item will be and then search for money-back offers, coupon codes, sales, etc. to see what you can get the price down to. When using Bing.com when they were still doing cash-back, I got 11% cashback on a lens purchase, which ended up being around $50 cheaper than anywhere else at the time. It all adds up!

Back in the day when it first started, Bing.com had 35% cashback for a few days. That was awesome! For a while thereafter, it hit 25%; even that was pretty great.

I have accounts with all of the major cashback sites, and I check evreward.com for a comparison among the sites to see what offers the best cashback for a given transaction. I buy from a variety of stores; usually based upon where I find deals with Slick Deals.