Nikon ED50A (1 Viewer)

I've just bought a Nikon 50ED from Amazon Japan, and thought it might be useful to provide an update for anybody looking to buy the scope who might not be aware of the savings to be made compared with buying in the UK (and presumably US).

Both the angled and straight versions are available on Amazon.jp, but I couldn't find the x27 wide MC eyepiece I wanted, and had to go with the WDS version. Together, these cost £284. This combination is £559 on Amazon.co.uk, although this includes VAT.

Buying from Amazon.jp is quite straightforward - you can select an English version of the site, use UK credit cards, and choose to make the purchase in GBP. What you cannot do, however, is ship most goods to a non-Japanese address, so you need to register with a Japanese forwarding agent - I used Tenso. This is easy enough to do online, if a little time-consuming - you need to provide them with copies of ID and a utility bill, which can be done by sending scanned copies. Tenso provides you with their warehouse address, which you use as your shipping address for Amazon.jp. I also had to provide Amazon.jp with a scanned copy of a recent credit card bill to comply with their security requirements.

Tenso's charges plus shipping and insurance cost around £30. It took less than a week for my order to arrive.

Thanks for that useful information. The 50ED appears to be disappearing from the USA market. B&H and Adorama are currently selling it with the 13-30 zoom at the "discounted" price of $670.

--AP

MC fixed eyepieces seem to be discontinued, only the DS-variants left,
guess the ED50 is the only scope left in the nikon lineup, taking these threaded eye pieces,