I am seriously thinking about a camcorder to record my visit to Melbourne in a few weeks and am beginning to wonder........

Would I be better to buy it in Oz or here in Bkk?

I assume I would be able to reclaim tax back if I bought it in Oz like tourists can do here. Yes?

If so, what are the cheapest places to buy it from?

Cheers.

( not really pinned down a specific model yet but thinking about the 40-45k baht range here )

If you decide to purchase in Oz you can get the GST back as you leave the country, look for the TRS booth once you clear the departure immigration.

One thing to considder if you are purchasing this type of equipment is watantee. Check with the country you live in wether the local agent or branch will honour the warantee, or will you have to ship back to the country of purchase. Your milage will vary from brand to brand.

You said you are visiting Melbourne, check out the "photomile" and all the usual white-gods discounters depending on the make and model you want. You may find Pantip cheaper than they sell (but what warantee?).

There is fierce competition re prices for all photographic equipment in Australia. Some of the big name stores will not have their price bettered by a competitor.

Choose your make and model, get a price from Thailand and post it here. Somebody in Australia should be able to give you an Oz price.

at the moment I am looking at soemthing like the

Panasonic NV-GS250 GC-S 3CCD + เทป 2 ม้วน + sd128mb + กระเป๋าสะพายกล้อง + ขาตั้งกล้อง Pana แท้ = 42900 B

Thats about the best price I have seen from Camera City Thonglor- even in Pantip ( although I havent started really negotiating yet ).

The best I have seen in Aus $ 1645 with Landmark which is about 48300B which means its cheaper to buy it here than Oz?!

Are the best deals for walk ins to the stores? Where is the "photomile"?

at the moment I am looking at soemthing like the

Panasonic NV-GS250 GC-S 3CCD + เทป 2 ม้วน + sd128mb + กระเป๋าสะพายกล้อง + ขาตั้งกล้อง Pana แท้ = 42900 B

The best I have seen in Aus $ 1645 with Landmark which is about 48300B which means its cheaper to buy it here than Oz?!

I've just done a quick Google for some price comparisons. Check out the links below.

You can also buy them dirt cheap on EBay.

Some of the big stores will match internet prices.

http://www.camerastore.com.au/Panasonic+NV-GS250-details.htm

http://www.shopbot.com.au/p-13500.html

http://shopping.ninemsn.com.au/Prices/shp/?itemId=2208759

The JVC Everio G model interests me. It's a mini harddisk-based camcorder where it records directly into MPEG2 format files so you don't need to capture manually by USB/Firewire cable and capturing software.

The JVC Everio G model interests me. It's a mini harddisk-based camcorder where it records directly into MPEG2 format files so you don't need to capture manually by USB/Firewire cable and capturing software.

True but you loose qualityas you are working with compressed files instead of the originals. Also, what would you do if you went to say, South Africa and Namibia for 5 weeks? I came back with 20 miniDV tapes.... It's hard enough to keep your batteries charged, never mind transferring files on the road...