Importing from Japan to uk.

The TTL converters have been having many problems so you might want to consider importing this equipment. I have been having probems with my TTL until now and still not resolved. Having bought the housing locally has been priceless in this case with one strobe replaced in one day and abrand new housing just before my trip to Honduras.

Naively, I didn’t expect this to be so contentious a topic .

Clearly there is a large difference between the price in Japan and the price in the UK. My maths is fine Paul but I guess I should have included more detail (price in Japan 196000yen +£40 P&P with 5% duty and 17.5% vat gives £1063, add on the couriers charge of say £25 for dealing with the duty etc give a grand total of £1088. Compare this to UK price on the web of £1595 excusive of P&P. The difference is £508. There are few loose ends like charges for a credit card payment and UK P&P but I think this is close enough for a first approximation).

However, Peter and James make valid points; service (both quality and time) and reduced risk have value. We all have to make our own decisions on whether these services are value for money and that answer will be different for different people.

If you are professional photographer then service and time could be worth more than the whole of your kit never mind a piffling £500 difference. On the other hand the additional £500 could mean additional months of saving for someone on a low income or even rule it out all together. I’m sure most divers fall somewhere between these two extremes, diving is a moderately expensive hobby after all.

I’m not sure yet where I stand on this. I can afford the additional money but do I think I’m getting value for money, hmm? I think I will follow Charles' advice and see if the UK supplier can improve on the prices shown on the web. If the difference is less the decision may be easier or more difficult .

I thought about developing my own in housing ttl circuit ( I work in R&D electronics) but life is just to short. And it may end up like my home-made 100W torch which used high capacity Lithium Ion batteries, but that is another story.

I thank everyone for their advice and useful comments.

Mark

Here Is yet another angle!

I live in Northern Sweden (North of the arctic cirle)!

When I decided to take the leap over from a compact to dSLR and started investergating the market I quickly realised that Sweden was to small of a pond for dSLR underwater photo equipment (there are a few small shops, but these keep a very low profile and does not keep these expensive products in stock, Im also not sure about their knowledge about service etc.)

So the only reasonable option for me was to look into importing my own equipment.

Since Sweden is a part of the European union and importing from another EU country is very easy I first tried to find what I wanted in europe (UK has a few great shops, and there seems to be a few good shops on the EU mainland aswell)

I then started researching the global market, starting with the sponsors of this page and I found a few great shops in the US.

But then I stubleled over Yuzo´s shop in Japan I realised that it made economic sense to buy Japanese products from Japan.

I realize the benefits of supporting your local dealer and that in the long run you would probably benefin from it in many ways. But If your local supplier is located in another county many thousands of kilometers away, I see nothing wrong in trying to find the best price when buying and the expect to have to spend a little time and money the day you need to service or repair your equipment...

i'm in similar situation of vannar. I live in toscany and near my home there is only one dSLR shop...

i bought my fantasea housing (at good price) and a ys-90 (at bad price) from it... some time later i need the macro port for the housing and after lots of phone call and visit to the shop they told me that they was unable to provide me that item...

retourning home i registered in the fantasea site and ordered the port... it arrived within a week.

then i bought the ys-110 on ebay, than i bough a sigma lens in the shop mentioned before, then some accessories in the fantasea site and tomorrow a dome port in a german site...

the support offered by "real people" in a shop near home may be great thing but a little shop can't provide variety of equipment and variety of price and i don't think that there are lot of big shop with 10-15 different housing for each model of dslr camera around the world