Heading to Hawaii soon and will be buying a camera, duty free or get one over there for the best price?

Cheers, yeh I was thinking the duty free discount may only be GST?

I wonder how many "support your local camera shop", post's this thread will attract, from all the usual suspects that jump on when it's a kite gear thread.

And I agree that Hawaii is generally more expensive for goods than the mainland.

Check out the Hong Kong-based stores on ebay. Best prices I have found anywhere.

Apart from the warranty when buying from those Ebay stores you can sometimes get gear that is made in taiwan or china instead of the US. Generally the US made gear is better quality (even though it's still the same item). For example Canon may have a 1.4 50mm lens selling for $150 on ebay for a product that's made in China, and the exact same 1.4 50mm lens will be sold at B&H for $200 but it's American made and will generally shoot a better quality picture.

Just something to keep an eye on when buying from OS. And another thing to think about when weighing up the options of whether it's worth the extra $$ for a bit of extra quality.

You'll find a lot of the stuff you buy from the big Aussie stores are US built.

You can buy them cheaper from sites like dwi, but they are grey inports from hong kong and do not come with an aussie warrenty, There are other sites that do come with an aussie warrenty such as ryda.com.au, you dont pay too much more. Another option with the recent release of some new DSLR's is to buy a out of season second hand camera which lots of people are selling to upgrade, some forum, even US forums are good places to find some farily unused second hand cam's. It all depends on what you are looking for though.