Here is my take. The original is good and has potential. All edits in LR5.

PS Post is much darker and colder than the edit.

Please, no politics here. Much nicer without any.

Sigma has a $150 manufacturer's discount posted for the lens and it expires tonight. Check out B&H for it. I could not find a lower retail price anywhere. $1250 going up to $1400. No used ones on eBay yet. A few without OS. I tested one without and for me, the heft of the lens made me unsteady. I returned it and decided that if I bought the lens, it would have to have image stabilization.

I want to thank everyone for their input, both pro and con about buying from abroad. I value everyone's response and lively discussion.

Here is where I am: undecided on two counts.

First, how badly do I want the Sigma 70-200 lens. I am ready to upgrade my glass but how badly do I really want and need it. My 18-200 is terribly convenient and not all that bad. The Sigma is one great big hunk to lug around and be changing it all the time when I already have that range with my walk-around lens. I would like to have it for my grandson's basketball but do I really need it? I have done fine so far. Do I have to do better?

Second, I am up in the air about the repair issue. Ever since I moved from my Mamiya C330 system to Canon film and then digital cameras, I had a camera in only once for a minor warranty matter. When importing, I get the first year warranty work done either here or in Hong Kong. Buying here, I get two extra years. In the event of total failure, Amex covers it. Therefore, my exposure is in the second and third years and the cost of a repair is likely to be less than the savings from buying abroad. I called Sigma and they will service an imported lens. Given my personal history, I am probably willing to take the risk of buying from abroad. Once the local price of the lens goes up $150 tomorrow, I would not buy it here.

Only if I had a crystal ball....

Thanks all and have a happy, healthy and photographic new year.

I found a website that calculates duties and for the lens I want to buy from Hong Kong, it is 2.3%. I think the way the system works is the vendor ships it and if US customs catches it, they bill you. In other words, the vendor is really out of the loop. I hope someone with more experience can confirm this.

Seeing that you are a photographer from Rochester, how could I not think of Eastman, one of the most extraordinary companies of all time. Its contribution to society is inestimable.

To your point of jobs going overseas, I agree with you and would add that employees, employers, customers, vendors, unions and government have all contributed mightily to the loss of jobs. Despite that, the US is still one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world. Worldwide, manufacturing jobs have fallen as much as they have here thanks to relentless process improvement. The days are gone when factories could employ untrained or semi-trained labor. The sharp increase in job skills needed for a manufacturing job is as important in how automated manufacturing has become.

This is a very big concern for me and I respect your warning. One vendor, digitalrev.com, has an interesting warranty. Ship it back to them and they pay for it in both directions or submit a quote from someone here to them and they will pay to have it fixed here. The downside is that this is a one-year warranty and not three. I asked them if they offer an extended warranty.

I priced out service here and it will wipe out the savings from Hong Kong.

Too much to weigh here.

Why?

Thanks for taking the time to research this.

Very prudent advice. Plus only one year, not three as here. Would probably be cheaper and certainly faster to get it serviced here. If I were hard on equipment, I would stick to buying it here. But I am not so I am in quandary. If only I had a crystal ball....

Here is what prompted my private exchange with deej.

I use a web-based exif viewer, Jeffrey's Exif Viewer, that reveals much more information than usual. One of the helpful things is depth-of-field.

"At 6.7m, with a depth of field of about 12cm, (from about 5.9cm before the focus point to about 6.0cm after)"
Translated, the camera was 22' from the lion and the depth-of-field was 5"

"28-300 mm f/3.5-5.6
Shot at 300 mm
Auto exposure, Shutter priority AE, 1/160 sec, f/6.3, ISO 200, Compensation: -1/3"

Too bad we cannot have a depth-of-field table built-in into our cameras because in this instance, focusing on anything other than eyes as has been pointed out will cause the face, the center of interest, to be out of focus. Knowing this, I would have stopped down further and been more careful as to where I focused. This would have been at the expense of a longer exposure or higher ISO. When shooting a moving object, we usually do not have the time to think this through.

Deej, I hope this helps you and keep shooting those lions.

Thank you Bear.

Thank you RTFM.

Thank you Dook.

That goes back at least 2,000 years. The Romans had an expression for it, caveat emptor. But that is all right, the buyers settle the score with caveat vendor.

I figure that with Amazon and PayPal, I have a reasonable degree of protection.

I am thinking of buying a lens from a merchant in Hong Kong using Amazon. For whatever it is worth, the merchant rating is very high. The US street price is $1,250 while the Hong Kong price with the input duty is $1,000. No shipping charge in either case. The Hong Kong product is new with all accessories and in the retail box. One-year warranty. The US warranty is three years.

What experience do people have with such sourcing?