What would be a good place to buy camera lens

Patrick G Crain said:

What would be a good place buy camera lens?

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Where do you live? That's kind of important to know.

If you're in the US, take a look at Adorama, B&H, and KEH. If there is a locally owned camera shop I would go there first though.
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Good luck and happy shooting!

I live in cuero, texas, which is one hour and half from san Antonio, two hours from Austin, and two and half hour from Houston.

Used on eBay or refurbished from Adorama. Buying name brand stuff is like buying a car. There's a certain novelty and convenience to buying it new, but your photography gains nothing from it. You can save hundreds buying used and it's the same tool, just with a little mileage on it. Actually I'd say name brand cameras and lenses stay out of the shop a lot more than cars.

Patrick G Crain said:

What would be a good place buy camera lens?

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If you have a camera shop you can go to, that is a good place to start. You can ask questions and actually look at the merchandise. It is always good to do business locally, keep these merchants in business.

Also, check out the good online retailers - B&H and Adorama - for prices. These stores also buy and sell used gear, which they evaluate and grade before they sell. I have dealt with them, and find them to be very good. Be careful of places without the solid reputation - they often have deals that sound too good to be true, and often are NOT true!

OP like to buy on Amazon and e-Bay, but you have to be careful because with Amazon, they sell for third parties, and with e-Bay there is no warranty that the products are what you expect. Also, no matter where you buy, make sure you purchase US products rather than "gray market", unless you are not concerned about being able to get repairs or about resale value.

You did not say what camera you have, but I know that Nikon's website sells refurbished equipment at good prices. Perhaps Canon does the same?

As you can see, there are a lot of places you can explore to buy lenses. Sometimes it takes patience to get what you want at a price you will be happy with. But to keep watching for the used merchandise, or new with rebates, can pay off nicely.

Hope this helps.

Susan

Amazon is very first-tier. Excellent customer service. B&H is close -- very good, but not perfect. They don't have returns on light bulbs, for example, even if they are expensive and defective. eBay can be very good -- the feedback system works well, and sellers which have 99.8% positive feedback tend to do well. LensRentals.com is good for used equipment, but takes a bit of timing to get what you're looking for. What you buy will be heavily used but well-tested.

Unlike most people in this forum, I don't favor my local camera shops. Most of the ones in my area aren't very good, and I'm perfectly happy to let them go out of business. I've only run into one which was good, but it only sells used equipment, and mostly not for the systems I shoot with. I also really don't favor most of the big corporate chains like Best Buy, which tend to be overpriced, underserviced, and incompetent.

Your mileage may very based on where you live. I've definitely run into very good little camera stores when traveling. If there was one in my area that I knew about, I'd probably buy there too.

My kit lens came with my camera (online from Hunt's) and I have gotten a longer kit zoom as a gift, which I think was bought at B+H, although of course it is rude to ask.

But both my excellent primes, which are the lenses I use 90% of the time, were bought used from KEH, and I expect if I buy more lenses that will be where they come from. I'll recommend that company to anyone-- they are excellent to work with and in my experience they grade very conservatively. They also pack things very safely, which Amazon and Ebay sellers sometimes do not. You won't get a bargain basement low price from them, or the latest thing right when it comes out, but you can get a more or less new lens at a considerable discount from the typical "street price". Both my primes were rated LN- and I could find no sign that they had ever been mounted on a camera. If they'd been sold to me as new I would not have blinked.

I have a canon eos 70d camera.

Patrick G Crain said:

I have a canon eos 70d camera.

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I looked on the Canon USA website, and under "where to buy" (left-hand side menu) there is a link for shop direct from Canon. Under this are refurbished cameras and lenses. There is a list of what they have available, and I suspect it changes regularly, just as the one on the Nikon website does.

Patrick G Crain said:

What would be a good place buy camera lens?

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Not sure where you're at, but in the US the best places are B&H Photo, Aodorama, Calumet Photographic to name a few.

Patrick G Crain said:

What would be a good place buy camera lens?

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Like others have said, Canon or Canon reburbished (or Adorama, B&H)

or the buy/sell forum here or FM or http://photography-on-the.net/forum/