I stopped by the Mall Plaza Trébol while touring Concepcion and Talcahuano, Chile. As I was walking through, I noticed a Nikon store. While there were many electronics stores in the mall, this was a completely Nikon-branded store.
One thing that stuck out is the price of cameras in Chile. For example, a Nikon D90 costs 999,000 Chilean Pesos, which is roughly equivalent to $2100 USD. The D90 is under $1000 with a kit lens in the US. These prices were consistent across the board for all camera models. That is, most cameras were roughly twice the price of the USD equivalent price.
Most of the products I’ve seen in Chile have been fairly equivalent to the USD values; however, electronics and gasoline have been consistently higher.
I live in Iran. D7000 is equal to $1,800 . four hundred bucks more than US. you can get far cheaper, but without guarantee :-)
Welcome to the world of Latin America, where our salaries are 3-4X smaller and prices are 2X greater. That’s why I never buy *anything* except for food and (if absolutely necessary) clothes in my country Costa Rica. It’s always cheaper to buy stuff online and ship it here using a mail forwarder in Miami, or to send it to a hotel/house where a friend is staying in the US and have them bring it to you.
It’s really maddening but for some reason the local distributors are incredibly greedy and would rather sell a fraction of the cameras at 2X the US price than sell way more cameras at a decent price.
I’ve noticed the same problem in England. My photography friends discuss purchases and prices and a quick conversion always reveals they are paying markedly more for the same products.
It’s really odd. Advantageous to me, but odd nevertheless.
That’s why we buy at Adorama :-)
I do not understand , I’s true , almost all photographers in Chile buy at Adorama or at B&H , Nikon center is too expensive for us , why buy there if we can buy abroad ?
Here in Lima there is a no oficial nikon camera store, and the prices are really to high (for the 85mm f1.8D they ask US$2200 aprox)…but lucky for us, here there is a paralel market, a “black market” if you wanna say so. where you can find Brand new DSRL with elevate but fair prices. A Nikon D90 is here about U$1100, just body.
there also a second hand market, and here is the more interesting thing. for example…somebody is selling me a excelent condition contax IIIa whit the 5 cm 1.5 lens for less than US$100, a hassy 500 el/m for US$500 with 100mm f3.5 lens….and a couple of days ago I bougth a Canon S95 for S/.700 nuevos soles, about US$250.
sadly, this places to find second hand camera products are in the Lima´s red areas…
hi, interesting info! Thanks. Which ‘red areas’ are you talking about?! Anywhere specific?
when I mean red areas, I mean the dangerous areas here in lima, especificaly areas like “la cachina” that are close dangerous neighborhoods…if you go there, you have to be very lowprofile, or hire a taxi to take you, wait for you and take you back like I use to do.
sorry, re reading my comment, I see I was in a mistake. the 85mm is the f1.4D, not the 1.8 and not the 1.4G.
We can’t buy nikon gear in chile… the prices are too high… the dealer of nikon in latin america sell at twice the price of US… if u want to buy for example a “D3x” , it’s cheaper if you get a plane, travel to New York and you buy it from BHphoto. :(
The official price for a d3x here is: “CLP$8.170.000” = “USD$16.915,113”
So, you just do like everyone else does… you buy it from US, or you go Canon.
(Canon is WAY cheaper)
IMHO: Nikon and BHPHOTO are the best :D
http://www.nikoncenter.cl/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=tpflypage.tpl&product_id=32&category_id=24&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=53&vmcchk=1&Itemid=53
here in argentina, the price of one nikon d3s is the same as a pretty decent car.
lol, and i thought that we, in Slovenia, EU are being robed.
One of the best online shops in Europe for photo equipment is Foka.nl and cameranu.nl.
So, from Nederland ^^
Prices for D90 and D7000 are around 100€ lower than prices in Slovenia, D3x is 6.999€ in Slovenia, EU and in Foka.nl / Nederlands is €5.639
Shipping is around 20-40€ for all e-shops.
And of course, since we are in EU, there is no tax ^^
Hi, I’m from Chile, considering the taxes and import duties for a Nikon camera, I’d be a few dollars more than in the U.S., but the problem are the importers, in Chile the lowest price store is http://www.apertura.cl, the D3x , cost 13.606 U.S., the Center Nikon brand representative in Santiago, the D3x cost $ 8,600,000, (17.838 U.S. ) reduced to 8,170,000 pesos (16.946 U.S. ) and all is well, lens and accessories, but the most ridiculous is that no memory cards up to professional cameras that maybe sold.
I can vouch for this – as an expat living in Santiago I had bought my cameras from Amazon UK and had family ship them over. White goods are usually more expensive in Chile but Nikon takes the biscuit in this area.
On the other hand, you can’t find a decent chorrillana anywhere in Europe… :-D