For years there has been an exemption on duties for optics into the US, and that has always been extended to camera's sold with optics. I believe it started years ago with medical exemptions for optics and was extended to all optics imported to the US. I have never heard of any changes to that law. I confirmed it many years ago, when I was doing a lot of eBay internationally,,, both buying and selling worldwide.

I believe it can be documented by visiting any larger USPS facility in your area of the country.

I still buy quite often from Japan and have never paid any import duty on camera's or lenses. I no longer sell internationally, although I've never experienced any losses or import duties either way, to Asia or Europe.

As all attornies told me when I made credit union loans to Law Professors at the University of Oregon.
"Ignorance of the law is your best defense in a court of law!" None of them would ever read a promissory note or loan document when presented to them. Don't ask!

As I am sure you will understand, I am not presenting this as a legal opinion. That would be incredibly stupid of me and any other non lawyer on this forum.

Ask at your post office, or I hear Michael Cohen may need your money. Oh wait, he's been disbarred, as have many Trumpies.

Two things that are self deprecating and lead to failure in your achievements.

Proof reading your own work for one. And for two, evaluating your own artistic endeavors. There are audiences of people who do that for you.

Your job is to create a body of work. It is the more profitable to turn the job of evaluation and criticism over to others.

It is even more disastrous to self evaluate when conditions (environmental) are not conducive to producing a strong flow of work.

You, are your own worst enemy in the post you put forth. Self criticism is deadly to your well being. Show your work for critique only. Both good and the bad.

I also find that I am drawn to less developed, less populated locales with wintry weather vistas. My primary goal is always the same, to see beautiful places; if I wasn’t worried about this post becoming an argument on existence, I would say, to see the beauty of God’s creation. My next goal is to point my expensive camera at this place and release the shutter, probably more times than I should have. Yes, I am trying to capture a sharing worthy photo but regardless if my photos meet all the pixel peeking standards, I still have had a most successful outing by bringing home the wonder of the things that I have seen.

I watched a documentary on Netflix last night - "Beyond the Curve." It was about the growing popularity of the flat earth movement. It was disappointing. I expected members to offer their "proof." The only thing they did in terms of proof was saying something vague about planes flying in the southern hemisphere and being able to see buildings in the distance. Actually, I'm surprised they used the term "hemisphere."

They did put a lot of emphasis on two scientific experiments, one using a $20,000 gyroscope and the other using lasers over a distance of several miles. These two experiments were going to prove that the earth was flat. The gyro experiment didn't turn out the way they wanted, so they tried it two more times in different ways. Now they are planning to try something else with the gyroscope. It was the same with the laser experiment. When they didn't get the result they wanted, they said they would have to try it a different way. So, if you want your calculator to say that 1 + 1 = 3, modify your calculator.

What's scary about this group is that they reject facts. As more people accept the idea that the earth is flat, there will be more people willing to reject facts and believe conspiracy theories. Supposedly, NASA and all the governments of the world are involved in a conspiracy to maintain the idea of an earth shaped like a ball. This great lie has been maintained for hundreds of years. A reporter asked their "king" why they couldn't just travel to the edge of the world. He said they are getting funding to do just that.

Their king said that doing a search on Google used to bring up 50,000 items. Now, you get 90 million. Stupidity, gullibility, and rejection of facts are dangerous characteristics of a population. For example, we didn't really land on the moon, lizard people are ruling us, the government is holding aliens at Area 51, there is a secret alien base on the dark side of the moon, chemtrails are poisoning us, the shooting at the Sandy Hook school never happened.