Buying a Zenitar 16mm (Soooooon)

Thanks to the guys on in the forums of dpreview.com who pointed me to rugift.com where they have decent prices on old russian lenses. In particular I’m interested in the Zenitar 16mm. It has a neat look based on what I’ve seen, isn’t horribly fisheyed like the Peleng 7mm (which I’m also interested in getting eventually) and ends up being about a 24mm on my *ist-D, a nice wide angle. Something might pop up on ebay of course, but eBay still scares me a bit.

Course, I have to figure out how to pay for it first. I have a small cache of money from my google ads, in USD, but it’s in my canadian bank account in a special “don’t screw me on the exchange rate” account where it stays in USD…. of course, the only way to get the money out right now is to get it in cash. I’ll have to talk to them and see if I can get a US credit card or something. Anyone else have this going on? Or know how to get myself a US bank account without living there?

Of course, somewhere down the list is something like this (a Pentax 1:5.6 600mm ED(IF) lens currently on eBay at $1,425.00 with 2 hours to go). Gotta have something to do wildlife photography with you know! 900mm with the 1.5x conversion factor baybe, yea!

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Category: Photography

4 Comments on “Buying a Zenitar 16mm (Soooooon)”

  1. I’ve bought a LOT of my lenses on ebay… about a dozen or so in lots of 2 or 3. Haven’t run into any obvious thieves or liars myself for camera equipment, lenses, or darkroom stuff.

  2. For me it’s more the hassle of getting the $ to them, wondering if the particular merchant out of the east ukraine is honest, and being scared that the bid will be driven too high and what I have my heart set on will go to someone else. But yea, I’ve heard a lot of good stories about lenses bought on ebay.

  3. That is what e-snipe is for. Just figure out how much you want to buy it for and then set up e-snipe to jump in at 6 seconds before the end of the auction. That way you don’t run the bid up.

  4. My understanding is that yes, you can get credit cards based on USD – you might want to look into “Secured Credit Cards” which is a mastercard/visa type card, but works like a debit card.
    This is also nice in that you can only spend money when it’s actually there… and no credit check to boot! 🙂