I just bought a Nikon D800 yes­ter­day. A refur­bished Nikon D800 that I found at Ado­rama. You know what’s even cooler than that price of $2,549.99 in the screen­shot I posted up there? I got it for $50 less than the posted price. Not sure why, but who am I to argue with the price quoted by a pro­fes­sional sales rep­re­sen­ta­tive? If he says it’s $2,499.99, then that’s what I’m going to pay.

Although I was in the mar­ket for a new cam­era, I thought I was just call­ing to get some infor­ma­tion that I’d have to mull over before mak­ing a deci­sion. Here’s what I was jug­gling in my head.

There’s a rumor that the price of the Nikon D800 will drop $200 on Decem­ber 15^th

This one is float­ing around on sites by Nikon Rumors, Fred Miranda and Thom Hogan warn­ing folks to wait until at least Decem­ber 15^th. Although the arti­cles I’ve read don’t men­tion a spe­cific price drop, the gues­ti­mate from aver­age folks is about $200. You never know, though. Could be more. Could be less. It’s a rumor, not a press release.

There are cur­rent bun­dles with the D800 and Nikon Lenses

This one isn’t a rumor, though. Nikon has dis­counts on var­i­ous lenses bun­dled with the Nikon D800 (and other cam­era mod­els) that can save you some money. I’ve been crav­ing the 28 – 300 lens for a while now, which would save me $150 in this bun­dle. On the other hand, I’d like to swap my Nikon 70-​200mm VR lens for the newer VR II model. That lens is $200 less in the bun­dle, and I’d try to off­set the rest of the cost by sell­ing my cur­rent 70 – 200.

As luck would have it, these bun­dles expire the day before Decem­ber 15^th? Coin­ci­dence or conspiracy?

There’s the refur­bished D800, but with only a 90 day warranty

Price drops and bun­dles are nice, but this one seemed to offer more sav­ings. The thing that gave me pause was the 90 day war­ranty. The stan­dard war­ranty for a new Nikon D800 is one year. So, 90 days would be less. That bugged me, and I men­tioned it to the sales rep.

That’s when he men­tioned that I could get a 3^rd party war­ranty for $64 that last three years. It’s not Nikon’s war­ranty, but the ser­vice techs are trained the same way, etc. Now that sounded pretty inter­est­ing to me. On top of that, I also have my Amer­i­can Express Extended War­ranty to add a year on to the manufacturer’s war­ranty at no extra charge. I bought the Mack War­ranty from Ado­rama feel­ing quite con­fi­dent that I ought to have suf­fi­cient war­ranty pro­tec­tion at least as long as a new cam­era. On top of that, there’s my photo insur­ance to han­dle other issues (though the deductible is more than I like).

Even pay­ing for an extended war­ranty, the sav­ings seemed to be much larger with the refur­bished model. There’s no way to know if it’s greater than the price drop, but here’s the kicker. I could return it within 30 days, then turn around and buy a new one. Ado­rama actu­ally does this auto­mat­i­cally for match­ing prod­ucts, but you have to make sure you know what matches. If I bought the bun­dle with a lens and the cam­era body price went down, it wouldn’t match because that’s a dif­fer­ent prod­uct unit. Know­ing that this bun­dle deal ends before the price drop, I fig­ured that wasn’t the safe plan if I wanted to hedge my bets.

About Refur­bished Cameras

I’ll admit that I don’t know much of any­thing about how Nikon selects cam­eras to sell as refur­bished. Are they used cam­eras returned from cus­tomers? Nikon doesn’t really say. My sales rep said that he under­stands they come from demo units at trade shows and things like that, or they could sim­ply be due to a firmware change. I tend to believe him. That’s because he knew I was going to buy a Nikon D800 one way or the other, so I doubt that he had any incen­tive to steer me toward the refur­bished cam­era over a new camera.

Hav­ing bought other refur­bished prod­ucts in the past, I can’t recall any prob­lems with them at all. They still have to pass the same qual­ity con­trol stan­dards as new prod­ucts. I also tend to believe that any prob­lems are prob­a­bly going to show up rel­a­tively soon rather than after 90 days, pro­vid­ing there are any prob­lems at all.

If you’re in the mar­ket for a Nikon D800, you have some options to con­sider. I don’t get a kick­back from Ado­rama to tell you about this stuff. Oddly enough, I have an affil­i­ate rela­tion­ship with B&H (affil­i­ate link), where they also sell used and refur­bished equip­ment. It’s just that B&H didn’t have a refur­bished Nikon D800 at the moment. They do have some other very nice stuff on that list, though.

Acces­sories for the Nikon D800

No cam­era is an island unto itself. I’m still con­tem­plat­ing addi­tional lenses, but I have a nice set of pro­fes­sional glass already. What I don’t have is a bat­tery grip and L-​Plate to mount this new cam­era on my tri­pod. I ordered the Nikon MB-​d12 bat­tery grip at the out­ra­geous price of $389. There are cheaper knock­offs, but I’ve read reviews from folks like Moose Peter­son about these things. I trust his opin­ion is much like mine in this regard — the Nikon grip is a bet­ter qual­ity prod­uct and you have to pay if that’s what you want.

Add on the L-​Plate from Really Right Stuff to work with the D800 and MB-​d12, well that’s another $200 by the time it ships here.

It’s easy to com­plain about prices for some of these items. but the truth is that I find value in them. My gear from Really Right Stuff is just out­stand­ing and built to last. The MB-​D10 grip that goes with my Nikon D700 has never let me down. I trust these brands because of past qual­ity. How­ever, I like a dis­count as much as the next guy. I fig­ure the money I saved on the Nikon D800 allowed me to throw in the MB-​D12 for free.

‘Tis the sea­son to be shop­ping. I hope this helps you take advan­tage of some savings.