Welcome to the Camera Dome :)
Back in our time, when prime lenses were $50, we had to climb the hill backwards four times a day, in five feet of snow, with bone chilling howling winds, while the sun scorched at 130 degrees above.
Time to put back on those climbing-the-hill backwards boots, because you can now get a new condition 50mm prime for around $50. It is the new condition Yongnuo 50mm f1.8 lens (for Canon EF) offered for $53 with free expedited shipping at B&H Photo. It comes with a one year warranty even!
To the eBay Deals we go with a rare occurrence, a prime lens under $100. It is new condition, but it is imported (grey market). However, a basic 50mm f1.8 prime lens is a much lower risk than $5000 tilt-shift walking-on-eggshells lens, so it’s up to you to enter your risk matrix and reach a decision.
Mumbling aside, this is a new condition imported grey-market Canon 50mm f1.8 II SLR lens offered for $90 with free shipping with a limit of five per buyer by eBay seller “Red Tag Camera” (99.9%). Over 2400 units have been sold so far from this listing.
At authorized dealers, this lens goes for $125, such as Amazon and B&H Photo where the imported goes for $110.
The Olympus M43 Lens Instant SaAvings promotion ends by 9/5/15. You can find participating items with priced in red ink at the official Olympus USA store.
The current iteration of the Nikon SLR Lens instant Savings are set to expire on 8/29/15. Eight lenses are participating. These are straight up discounts on the lenses, you don’t need to buy a camera body or sing or dance to get them. You can find the nicely organized at B&H Photo…
Zoom-zoom for Micro Four Thirds users! B&H Photo is offering the new condition Panasonic Lumix G Vario HD 14-140mm f4.0-5.8 ASPH MEGA OIS superzoom lens for $300 with free shipping… Optionally you can file a mail-in rebate with Panasonic that triples the warranty (three years instead of one). This requires a sacrificial lamb: you have to include the UPC barcode from the lens box…
PS: if you accidentally mis-align your right hand while trying to touch type “Mega OIS”, you end up with …”Mega POS”.
The official Canon USA online store has a refurbished sale on select products. The sale prices are shown in red ink. These items come with a one year Canon warranty and pass a “comprehensive quality assurance inspection”. A number of red-ink items are out of stock, but about half of them remain:
+ select refurbished DSLR kits (multiple pages)
+ select refurbished SLR lenses (multiple pages)
+ select refurbished Fixed Lens cameras (multiple pages)
One of the further-down-the-page eBay Deals is the new condition imported grey-market Sony T* E 16-70 F4 ZA OSS lens (aka SEL1670Z) offered for $700 with free shipping and a three year warranty from the seller GetItDigital (99.7%) with a limit of five per customer. This does not come with a Sony USA warranty. Offer ends by 8/24/15.
This lens goes for $900 at authorized Sony retailers such as B&H Photo (4% rewards = $36~) and Amazon and Adorama (six free accessories).
If you are interested in getting the Pentax 645Z medium format digital camera, Adorama has an “optical encouragement” for you. If you purchase the Pentax 645Z body only kit TOGETHER with ONE LENS from a list of 15 eligible 645 lenses, you will save $1200 on the total purchase amount. No coupon, no rebate, just add one of the lenses to the bundle and add the bundle to the shopping. You can only add ONE lens to this promotion – you cannot turn it into a money-maker fatwallet-style 🙂
There are two lenses in the lot that go for $1200 (or less), essentially making the lenses FREE (55/2.8, 200/4). The discount cannot be bigger than the price of the lens, so the $1100 lens is only a $1100 discount. The next lowest price lens of the lot is the 45mm f2.8 (645) which goes for $1300, so with the combined purchase discount, you are essentially getting it for $100.
This is a screenshot crop of the right side of the Adorama shopping cart after you add the 645Z and the 55/2.8 lens. You still have to press the green Add Bundle to Cart to proceed with the order…
The Pentax 55-300mm f4-5.8 DA HD ED WR lens is currently on sale for $320 with free expedited shipping at B&H Photo.
The official Canon USA online store has a refurbished sale on select products. The sale prices are shown in red ink. These items come with a one year Canon warranty and pass a “comprehensive quality assurance inspection”. Some could argue this may be more than what they do for new condition items 🙂 Participating are:
+ select refurbished DSLR kits (multiple pages)
+ select refurbished SLR lenses (multiple pages)
+ refurbished Speedlite Flashes (four options in-stock, one sold out)
+ select refurbished Fixed Lens cameras (multiple pages)
+ time-permitting I will go through them later on, but I don’t want you to miss out any potential deals that sell out until I find time to go through them all (already a few of the red-ink items are sold out).
BorrowLenses.com offers a 15% off discount by using coupon code BTS15 on any rental order that starts by Friday 8/21/15. The coupon expires 8/17/15.
More superzoom action at the eBay Deals, this time of the SLR kind. The Sigma 18-250 f3.5-6.3 DC OS HSM macro lens is currently offered for $230 with free shipping and a four year warranty (1+3) by Adorama’s eBay store in the Canon, Nikon, Sony Alpha and Pentax K SLR mounts. Limit five per buyer.
PS: if you are having a bit of a deja vu, this had been offered a few weeks ago for $250 by Buydig thru the eBay deals.
Adorama has a sale on five different variations of the Rokinon 8mm f3.5 fisheye lens with the Pentax K-mount and Sony E-mount going for $190 (the last two on the page), with the Fuji X and different E-mount for $200 and the Nikon full frame going for $210. These are manual focus lenses.
More B&H action, this is a round-up of the current Lens Instant Savings promotions running:
+ Canon SLR Lenses and flashes (21 lenses, 2 flashes)
+ Nikon SLR Lenses (8 lenses)
+ Sony SLR and Mirrorless Lenses (many options)
+ Pentax SLR Lenses (36 options)
+ Sigma SLR Lenses (186 options) – use coupon code PSWBH15 at checkout for more discounting for the Sigmas
If you are comfortable with open-box lenses, Best Buy currently has the open box Sony 28mm f2 FE lens for $364 with free shipping. Their description is as follows: “Returned, used as display model in store, or opened due to packaging damage but remains in like-new condition.” You can locate open-box options on the top line, between the product name and price box (annotated screesnot crop below):
The new condition price at authorized dealers is $450. Some retailers offer extra free accessories with it at $450, making the decision more difficult. For example, Adorama includes a 3-filter kit, lens pouch, lens wrap, cleaning kit, and Corel software (including Aftershot Pro 2 and Paintshop Pro X7).
Rule #4975.34.AV30iiv (0.453 revision) of the Brand Fairness Doctrine requires that every time we mention a Tokina special, we have to match it with a Tamron offer, if nothing else, because those two names are too similarly confusing, at least to newcomers to the world of photography 😉 With that unnecessary introduction out of the way, the Tamron SP 24-70mm f2.8 DI VC USD Lens is offered for $1200 after a $100 mail-in rebate (MIR) plus 4% promotional rewards (= $50~) by B&H Photo in the Canon, Nikon and Sony Minolta Alpha mounts.
The Lensbaby Special Edition Spark 50mm f2 Selective Focus Lens is currently on sale for $60 with free shipping and 4% promotional rewards at Adorama, available in the Canon and Nikon SLR mounts. Offer ends 8/31/15.
The lens party continues at B&H, this time for Nikon DSLR photographers, the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 DX II ATX lens is on sale for $400 with free expedited shipping and 4% promotional rewards ( = $16~). The Canon and Sony Minolta Dyxum A-mount also go for $400 but don’t get the 4% promotional rewards.
B&H Photo has a big sale on 62 Sigma Lens options. Additionally, coupon code PSWBH15 entered at checkout can further discount the lenses by up to $50 off more (I can’t test the coupon on 62 lenses and live to tell, so that’s DIY on any lenses you might be interested in). This is part of their PhotoshopWorld sale festivities. Coupons expire 8/16/15.
Participating are lenses for DSLRs and mirrorless systems, along with a few flash units. Lens prices range from $209 to $1509 before the coupon is entered. A number of participating items also earn 4% promotional rewards (but not everything listed there).
For Canon and Nikon manual focus lens fans, B&H Photo is offering the Zeiss 50mm f1.4 Planar T* for $525 with free expedited shipping and 4% promotional rewards (= $20~).
Rumors of Zeiss hiring Vanilla Ice for a new “Zeiss Zeiss Baby” TV commercial are completely unfounded, but founded in your wallet is a new sale on the Zeiss 85mm f1.4 Planar T* manual focus lens for Canon and Nikon DSLRs for $983 with free shipping and 4% promotional rewards (= almost $40) at B&H Photo.
B&H Photo currently has a sale on 36 DSLR Lenses. This is a straight up sale, no mail-in rebates. Free expedited shipping.
PS: B&H just launched a barrage of Photoshop World specials. I will start “digesting” them after lunch and post various individual posts throughout the day. If you can’t wait, some of them have been added to their Featured Deals page…
The white color scheme of the factory refurbished Nikon 30-110mm VR (CX 1-System) lens is currently going for $110 with free shipping by BuyDig.com with a 90 day Nikon refurbished warranty.
Rokinon has revealed a trio of new T1.5 prime lenses under the Xeen name, the 24mm, 50mm and 85mm, available in five mounts: Canon and Nikon (SLR), PL-mount, Sony E-Mount, and Micro Four Thirds. All of the lenses go for $2500 each and are available for pre-order at B&H Photo as follows: 24mm T1.5 and 50mm T1.5 and 85mm T1.5.
UPDATE: they are also available for pre-order at Adorama in four of the five mounts (Nikon not listed at the moment).
PS: you can find these added to the New Cameras and Lenses of 2015 tracking page.
Zoom-zoom APS-C DSLR-style now as Tamron has a new 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 Di VC II lens available for pre-order for $250 in the Canon, Nikon and Alpha (the C/N/A in the blog-post title) mounts. You can pre-order them at B&H Photo and Adorama.
You can find this lens added to the tracking page of New Cameras and Lenses of 2015.
The Panasonic 35-100mm f2.8 lens is currently going for $1150 with a free 3yr NewLeaf Spills/Drops warranty and $46 promotional rewards at Adorama.
I don’t know the authorized dealer status of Overstock, but as of the time of writing, they are offering the 35-100mm f2.8 lens for $978.
Adorama is offering the Panasonic 7-14mm f4 micro four thirds lens for $700 with free expedited shipping. This is marked as a “final price”. It is a new condition model with a one year Panasonic warranty.
UPDATE: the price is down to $700 at B&H Photo as well.
Borrowlenses has a new coupon, LEVELUP can get you up to 30% off your next gear rental when you place an order by 8/10/15 and receive/pickup by 8/14/15. The coupon savings depend on the rental amount as follows:
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