New arrival from the Netherlands

I sold both my Sigma 100-300mm f4 and 50-500mm OS to buy this lens but to be honest I was a little put off by the price and I very nearly bought another 50-500mm instead. Anyway I started a thread a few months back about the falling value of the Euro and so I decided to see how easy it is to import an expensive lens from Europe. After a bit of searching and a recommendation on another forum on Monday I contacted a Pentax dealer in the Netherlands. One international bank transfer later (Monday) I got an email from the dealer Tuesday evening to say payment was received and the lens had been shipped that evening.

Anyway, this arrived today .... Hopefully it will be a nice day tomorrow so I can give it a thorough testing with and without the 1.4x TC but even with the few shots I took on the K-5IIs this afternoon I can see it is going to be better than the Sigma.


New Toy by Mike.Pursey, on Flickr

Very nice Mike.
Which Dutch dealer did you use?

Sadly I am not in a position to spend any money on new gear.

Hi Mike,

If it is not to impertinent a question,how did the total price compare to a Uk dealer including shipping ?

Rgds

Looking forward to seeing some pics.

As the £ is so strong against the Euro these days I did a quick recce last night to see what kind of saving could be made against an expensive item like the 150-450 lens.

A very brief search yielded a company in the Netherlands ...cameranu.nl from Urk.

Their price for Pentax 150-450 is 2199 Euros plus 45 Euros courier to UK so 2244E altogether. Converting this in absolute terms using a rate of 1.37 Euros to £ gives a UK price of £1638.

Using a more commercially realistic rate of 1.30 to the £ to allow for conversion rates/commission etc this brings the price up to about £1726...but crucially a useful saving of about £273 against UK price !

One of the 'benefits' of being in the EU...at last.

I suspect that the UK price will fall sharply soon as it does seem to be massively overpriced. To me it looks more like a £1000 lens and at that price i'm sure Ricoh would do very nicely out of it.

In the meantime, like everyone else i'm really looking forward to see images from it.

Cameranu is an excellent company btw. I use them a lot.
Also consider Kamera-express. Sometimes they offer a better deal than Cameranu. Also reliable, but usually more expensive is Konijnenberg.

Plenty of other benefits to being in the EU but that is politics .

Sorry for the slow reply ... been a bit busy.

Was purchased from Fotolooman Gwyn, total price incl postage, bank charges and currency conversion was approx £1580.

Thanks Mike, the contact is much appreciated too,

Have fun with it

Best regards


quote:3496ace15f="Mike-P"]Sorry for the slow reply ... been a bit busy.

Was purchased from Fotolooman Gwyn, total price incl postage, bank charges and currency conversion was approx £1580.[/quote]

Sounds like a good deal Mike, thanks from me too, I think I will get an order across to Holland ASAP,

Not heard of Fotolooman.. I knew of Kamera-Express, Cameranu and Konijnenberg. HAFO in The Hague was also one of my favourite shops....

But less than £1600, damn you Mike you might start costing me money

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Konijnenberg operate a specialist UK Online Shop called Photospecialist
They take Paypal and Cards (or BT)
2 year guarantee extendable to 4 on extra payment.

https://www.photospecialist.co.uk/our-stores

If that doesn't work try....

http://www.photospecialist.co.uk

I was looking at some Novoflex stuff and they are really cheap.

The Pentax gear is cheap as well and postage to the UK seems to be £6 -£10

K-3 ii body £707, but the UK offer of a free Flu-Card is probably better.
DA*300mm f/4 for £729
150-450mm £1,558 .... Due back in shortly.
60-260mm £906

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'Costumer services'?