I think smile photo prices are an excellent indicator of what you should pay. I stayed away from them for years because of all the bad rap they get on the net, however I recently bought a Nikon 28mm f/3.5 PC lens from them for $600 which is about $200 dollars less than most of their competitors. No problems whatsoever. If you follow the mail order guidelines publised in most photo magazines it's hard to go wrong.

Their Pentax prices are pretty accurate, and I would not hesititate to buy from them again. Unlike other NYC stores their prices are similar to international prices for this gear which tend to be 10 -15% lower than USA prices. I buy all my medium format equipment through international dealers now. Who wants to pay an extra 10% to 20% for a middle man or distributor? Or in Mamiya's case an extra 50-70%! If Asia was hooked into the net as much as the USA was, USA distributors wouldn't be able to charge us outrageous markups.

Peace Rolland Elliott

-- Rolland Elliott (rolland_elliott@yahoo.com), April 06, 2000

Answers

You make some good points Rolland. But, I bought a 105mm from them as a gift 16 months ago and they could not deliver one at the advertised price. They could however find one in their stock that was 10% higher though. The reason I called them in the first place was because they had the best price, but when they gave me their actual price for the lens, it was no better than their competition. To me,"bait and switch" is not good business practice. This is why I commented on them in my posting about the new 300mm.

-- Steve Rasmussen (srasmuss@flash.net), April 06, 2000.

I have a particularly appropriate Smile story for this forum. When I was buying my 55-100 zoom they had the best price... If I wanted the one with the SMC coating that would run considerably more. If you like to gamble buy tech stocks- not equipment from Smile :(

-- Rolf Strasheim (rolfs@ionet.net), April 06, 2000.