I am thinking about a Bessa R2, but dont seem them at B and H or Adorama. Is Gandy's dealership the only place they are available?

-- joe zarick (jza1058168@aol.com), May 15, 2002

Answers

yes, they are not generally available in the US yet. I think they sell for $425 at some HK dealers though. cheers,

-- pat (modlabs@yahoo.com), May 15, 2002.

Joe, I bought mine from Gandy, and the service was great. I also got the Nokton. John

-- John H Osterholm (Barjo4@attbi.com), May 15, 2002.

These are very limited distribution cameras right now--whether that is what Cosina intended I don't know. Gandy's price seems fair and at least he knows the cameras. I wish someone locally had one so I could see one first hand. Apparantly the olive green looks very nice.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), May 15, 2002.

My Bessa R was bought off of Ebay from Hong Kong last September. It arrived in 8 days & was paid for by PayPal..It's cost was 150 dollars less that anyone here in the USA...

-- Kelly Flanigan (zorki3c@netscape.net), May 15, 2002.

i spoke to schneider two weeks ago (the official voigt importer for the usa) and was told that they had received ZERO orders for the camera from dealers, and probably would not place a stocking order until there were at least a few requests. i tried to explain that if dealers actually had them interest in the camera mite be stoked. if schneider is not going to advertise the product, or put it into the hands of retailers, it seems unlikely to succeed here. impossibly, schneider is doing even a worse job with voigt than THK. it really seems like they are intentionjally trying to kill the products, at least in the usa market. does anyone ever see voigt ads anymore (excluding dealer ads)?? at least thk ran a few in shutterbug, etc. i guess te ultimate statement is that the r2 is not even mentioned in the voigt section of the schneider website. indeed, they appear to have sopped updating the site for voigt products about 18 mos ago -- none of the many new products since jan 2001 are listed. what a sad joke.

-- roger michel (michel@tcn.org), May 16, 2002.

Hello Joe,

I bought my R2 outfit from "etofore", a Hong Kong dealer who lists stuff on eBay. I went direct to him rather than through eBay. Here's what I got and the price:

Black R2 body 35/1.7 lens and hood Mechanical winder T winder, I think is what it's called Lens adapter ring Total cost in U.S. dollars, delivered to Fresno, CA: $1090.

Apparently there's no factory warrantee on this deal--nor from any other California dealer that I can find at this writing.

As to the R2, I sold off a bunch of medium format cameras to get it. Past experience shows me that the lenses that Bessa lenses are far better than any other 35 mm lenses I've ever used. In that regard, I'm planning to unload a bunch of other 35mm cameras because, outside of one Tokina 17mm lens, I'm not satisfied with anything other than Bessa.

Hope you find your camera and enjoy it to the max.

Best wishes,

Martin

-- Martin Young (martiny02@attbi.com), July 05, 2002.