[UPDATE: there are just a couple of hours left to grab the Rokinon 16mm for $299 ($100 rebate) at [shoplink 22284 ebay]ebayUS here[/shoplink] / found via dealsrunner]
I’ve read about it in the comments, and now another FR-reader (Oleg) confirmed it: if you are from Europe and want to save big on the XF-lenses, you should consider to buy it in the US, where, at the moment, XF lenses are very convenient.
Here is what Oleg told me [he bought the 27mm]:
“Hi, I live in Germany. Fuji lenses are very expensive here. Following the rumors, I have ordered from B&H, paid 19% duty and 10Euro (14 US$) brokerage fees, and the lens, ordered on Feb 20, was here yesterday (Feb 24). I paid duties on delivery: very convenient! To sum up, the lens for which I’d pay 436 Euro here, I paid 223 Euro! I think it’s worth it!”
And here they are:
XF 14mm: $200 off (price $700) at BHphoto / Adorama / AmazonUS / Pictureline
XF 18mm: $200 off (price $400) at BHphoto / Adorama / AmazonUS / Pictureline
XF 23mm: $150 off (price $750) at BHphoto / Adorama / AmazonUS / Pictureline
XF 27mm: $250 off (price $200) at BHphoto / Adorama / AmazonUS / Pictureline
XF 35mm: $150 off (price $450) at BHphoto / Adorama / AmazonUS / Pictureline
XF 60mm: $250 off (price $400) at BHphoto / Adorama / AmazonUS / Pictureline
XF 55-200: $200 off (price $500) at BHphoto / Adorama / AmazonUS / Pictureline
The UHS-II SD-cards are now available for pre-order also at BHphoto here. You can get it also at Adorama here.
45 Responses
yep, I got mine (27 mm) today :-). I live in Germany ….
What about the warranty? Does Fujifilm offer international warranty on both lenses and cameras?
I asked directly to my local (Italian) Fujifilm support about the warranty on items bought in US (or from any other foreigner dealer).
They said that the local support in this case covers the equipment only for the first year (they called it “conventional warranty”), while during the second year the gear is still protected, but has to be sent back to the foreigner dealer of the country where it was bought.
Better than nothing I’d say.
(Given that the gear was bought from an official foreigner Fujifilm dealer, not from grey market, of course…)
I can confirm this from The Netherlands. Fujifilm offers 1 year warrenty on stuff coming from US.
I also ordered the 27mm, along with a nice Domke bag for a total of € 263 including taxes & custom fees handled by Amazon. Normal price would be € 429 + € 104 = € 533!
Same here, my 27mm just came in an hour ago. Beautiful little setup together with my locally (Netherlands) bought X-T1.
So a good experience I assume? Did you pay the tax and duties right away or at delivery? seems you get a better rate if you do it locally.
Bought the 27mm as well from Amazon. Looks like I’ll pay about 300$ including import fees or about 350$ less than the Danish asking price. Awesome.
I live in Germany as well.
How is that possible? B&H charges over 140$ for Tax&duties and shipping, sending the pirce of the 27mm to 249€
Same here, Live in France and for the same Lens (199$) they add Duties and Tax (104$) and Shipping (44$)
That’s a total of 347$ = 253€ without border duties.
Can Oleg be more precise about how he managed to get it for 223€?
I think he did not pay or included the shipping price.
All duties and tax are included in that $104. So that also applies to the border duties. But it is still quite far off from the €223.
Okay, but it’s still a good price if you don’t have to add any more duties.
It is, and I think if you are willing to go through the trouble of paying tax & duties locally, it’ll cost you less. I think that’s what Oleg did: “I paid duties on delivery: very convenient!”
What is the trouble about paying it locally?
Not exactly knowing what the amount will be (due to exchange rate). And just opening the door & start unboxing is always more convient 🙂 That’s all I can think of. I haven’t got any experience with buying camera equipment outside the EU before, but with these deals they certainly have my attention!
In Germany the Zollamt can give you wonderful experiences.
If you are lucky, and use an obscure carrier, then your package might not get inspected and so you pay no taxes at all. This does not happen so often anymore unfortunately, but it was common in the past.
With Fedex often you get a letter from the Zollamt requesting some money a few weeks after you get your package.
In the past the delivery dude will want some money on the spot but I guess they stopped the direct collection because most people don’t like paying taxes and welcome the opportunity to debate the topic with said delivery dude.
If you are very unlucky your packet will end up at the Zollamt and then you get to see where your tax dollar get spent … while waiting for the Zollamter to finish eating his apple, make a coffee, send an email … all the while seeing that you are standing there with obviously nothing better to do that stand and wait to pay for your packet. Perhaps you even get to debate which duty should be applied …
Its much much easier to have the retailer collect and pay the tax for you!
Hi guys, it’s me who started this; just to clarify. The price is 199$, the delivery is 44$. Once you choose Germany as country of delivery, on check-out on B&H to deal with duties, you you pick one of two.
1. You can check “pay duties now” and that would be 100$ and you need not go to customs office (Zollamt), since you have basically paid all in full (btw, ebay sellers offer such option as well). So, it will make 343$, or 250 Euro. You pay 343 to B&H. And hopefully nothing else.
2. You can check “pay on delivery” and all you pay is 243$, or 178 Euro to B&H.
Since I am not sure about the first option (more precisely, that I will not have to pay even more custom duties) and custom office is close to Cologne, I chose the second option “pay on delivery.”
The UPS brought the package to my house and my wife paid 46 Euro (36 Custom fees (which is 19% of 250$) and 10 Euro [some] brokerage fees).
So I paid about 223 Euro in total.
This is what B&H says about the warranty:
All item sold by B&H are warranted by the manufacturer/distributor… All item needing repair should be sent to the the manufacturer/distributor directly for service.
But I have no idea how is it going to be when something goes wrong. Nothing has ever happened to any of my lenses, so I am just happy about being able to take photos with this surprisingly capable lens and not worrying about the warranty.
By the way, I usually buy used photo stuff off ebay and everything just works: I almost never have any warranty on my gear.
Of course this is of a little comfort for those who are pondering to buy 1000$ expensive lens.
You just need to inquire at local fuji about this.
Hope it helps in some way.
Oleg
Same here, bought mine for 347$ form B&H = 260 euros. Here in France it’s 431 euros ….
That sounds pretty interesting. I sold my 35mm a while back and it seems I could buy a new one for less than I sold it for!
Distributers and retailers need some margin … is it possible these lenses are being sold by Fuji at a loss, or is the RRP just set for a very healthy profit?
I think they are clearing inventory for an upcoming lens refresh. Most likely they are taking the loss on these, not the retailers. In retail it is almost always at the cost of the manufacturer–rarely does a retailer take a hit in profits for a promotion.
Either they will go back and improve the older lenses (18/35/60) or they will be doing weather resistant across the line. Just my guess though. Based on interview with their marketing manager stating the need to “refresh our lens lineup.”
To chime in with my own experience, I also ordered a 27mm XF from Amazon US.
151€ for the lens, 67€ for shipping, 73€ for customs and taxes.
All in all, 158€ saved from the current price here in France.
Strange, I ordered from Amazon US as well, from Italy, and paid $200 for the lens, $16 for shipping,$67 customs and tax…all amounted to 201 Euros, which is a lot less!
I just ordered the 55-200 lens from Canada – Henrys.com provides the same deal until 2014/02/28 – and only charges 30 CAD for shipping to Germany. With current rate conversion I have to pay 350€ – not including any tax from German Zoll…
Retail Price in Germany is 699€ incl. VAT
another option for europe is mydigitaland.com. I bought there my X100s from Germany and it took around 3 weeks. But everything was fine. You don’t pay more. No fees, no taxes. No delivery costs. No surprises. Prices for the lenses are:
14mm 570 EUR
18mm 265 EUR
23mm 691 EUR
27mm 265 EUR
35mm 378 EUR
56mm 842 EUR
60mm 437 EUR
18-55mm 399 EUR
55-200mm 489 EUR
check it out here:
http://www.mydigitaland.com/lens/fuji-filmfilm.html
Thanks for sharing your experience with digitaland.
Does your invoice shows your country’s tax ? If not, then you cannot justify it to customs in case of control when you pass the border with your gear, exposing you to pay tax and penalty…
How does it work for the warranty, do you need to send back to UK or even worse to Hong-Kong ?
These are Grey imports from HK.
Hmmmm indeed looks interesting even for Europeans…
Big question is about the warranty. Especially the French warranty (http://warranty.fujifilm-digital.com/terms/fr) says that the item should be returned to the shop or website where it has been purchased. However they say that when you have purchased in another country than the one you live in currently, then it is the service center of your current location who is handling the repair for free, but then they don’t say how to send it to this center… Very confusing….
Hmmmm indeed looks interesting even for Europeans…
Big question is about the warranty. Especially the French warranty http://warranty.fujifilm-digital.com/terms/fr says that the item should be returned to the shop or website where it has been purchased. However they say that when you have purchased in another country than the one you live in currently, then it is the service center of your current location who is handling the repair for free, but then they don’t say how to send it to this center… Very confusing….
Hi Patrick, I ordered the X-E1 + kit lens from AmazonUS through the link on this site. I live in the UK and the total cost including customs tax was £550, which amazon dealt with. Considering the price of the kit lens alone here is £400, thats a camera for £150! The normal price here is £729! It even arrived a few days early. The only thing is a question of warranty, which I understand in the US is 1 year and in the EU it is 2 years, but frankly if the camera is that cheap is it worth worrying about? It would be interesting to find out if Fuji do honour any kind of warranty.
Anyway thanks again for the link and yes buying from the US for Europe worked fine!
So it is possible for us from the UK to buy and have it imported over to the UK? How much are the shipping fees and import fees or does it vary based on what you order? Is the warranty still valid?
Only I’m interested in the 14mm F2.8 and curious how much that would cost in pounds…
I paid about £90 in import duty / currency conversion, And funnily enough I managed to register my X-E1 with fujifilm.co.uk. I’d act fast though, some people are saying amazon.com are no longer shipping to the UK so try the different links above 🙂
Ahh ok thanks. I’m still saving up for it so hopefully the deal will still be around and Amazon.com will still ship by then. I’m guessing it’s because of all the shipping costs involved and the workarounds people are doing.
It’s a pity, that in the US the Fuji-lenses and cameras are even cheeper than in Europe and Germany. Maybe because nobody is buying these lenses and cameras in the USA an Japan. Unfortunately in Germany the sell quite a lot therefore they do not have to make “ANY” special deals.
Hello X Fans,
When I saw the XPro-2 sensor size survey, It got me thinking a little outside the box, literally.
Fuji has said that because the X series lenses may not be able to cover the full frame size, what do you guys think about a square sensor? instead of cropping an APS 25.1 X16.7, why not just have a 25.1 X 25.1 square image capture. You will still be able to use the X lenses and if you wanted to crop back to the rectangle format, you could still do that.
I’ve used Hasselblad for years and now I still crop a lot of my images square. Fuji may be able to increase their MP to 18 or whatever.
You can only fit about 21.3mm square inside the same circle
You need to understand the geometry of the thing.
The diagonal of 25.1×16.7 is about 30.15
The diagonal of 25.1×25.1 is about 35.5, which exceeds the image circle.
Yes, it would be cool. Thanks for enlightening me.
http://www.mydigitaland.com/lens/fuji-filmfilm.html..best fuji prices in europe (lenses also)
http://www.mydigitaland.com/digital-camera/fuji-fujifilm.html best prices for fuji cameras in europe,,,and check teh lenses also…the 56 mm 1.2 at 842 euros
My 27mm arrived yesterday at a total cost of NZ$ 270 (US$225). I used the company “Youshop” who have an American address, and then they forward it to you (part of NZPost). Haven’t got my X-T1 to mount it on yet though!
What has happened to Thomas Meng?
seems amazon US does not ship the Fuji lenses to Europe anymore 🙁
Try B&H or Adorama. They normally offer international shipping, too.
Both have very high shipping costs compared to AmazonUS.
PS: I just checked, AmazonUS only ships the first generation lenses (18mm, 35mm, 60mm) to Austria, none of the newer ones. I guess it is the same for other European countries. I was going to order the 14mm and the 55-200mm, shipping would have been possible in the beginning of this week, too bad I did not order immediately.
Has anyone else done this in the UK, feeling very nervous about it. I’d like the 56mm so maybe it’s not worth risking the warranty not being valid or just for one year etc. as it’s such an expensive lens. mmm decisions, decisions.
Hi Helen
It’s worth keeping an eye on Fujifilm UK’s online refurbished outlet:
http://shop.fujifilm.co.uk/lenses?cat=111
It probably won’t be long before the 56mm appears there. I believe that you get a year’s warranty and there’ll obviously no import taxes. A protective lens filter is often included too.
Douglas
Fuji offers a full international warranty, and here is the link: http://warranty.fujifilm-digital.com