Being a keen photographer, I am often asked for recommendations as to what camera to buy and where to buy it to get the price. This was the recent case with a relative. My relative was looking to purchase a point and shoot camera. She ended up doing a lot of reasearch on pricing and I recommended she check out Amazon.com , Buy.com and Newegg.com .

After doing her own research, she came across http://www.bwayphoto.com which she found in the back of a PC World magazine. The hair on the back of my neck immediately popped up. Why? Because these places are almost always scam artists.

As an example, the place she found was Broadway Photo & Video. Here is a picture of their store front in New York.

Would you buy an expensive camera from this place?

What these places typically do is advertise a ridiculously low price for a camera, but the catch is, the price is for the camera only. All the accessories that normally come with it (manuals, cables, started memory card, etc) have been removed. If you then try to buy the camera, the would force you to buy the accessories for a huge price and if you refresh, they would be suddenly out of stock. Don't waste your time.

The only places I would recommend buying camera equipment from in NY are http://www.BHPhoto.com and http://www.Adorama.com . I'm sure there are other reputable places, but these are the ones I've dealt with and the ones most other people on the know would recommend

If you are not sure about a particular store, a good place to do some research would be at http://www.resellerratings.com

If you would like to see a picture of what these NY stores look like, check out http://donwiss.com/pictures/BrooklynStores/