How the site works

Where the prices come from

Four sources feed every camera page: MPB, KEH, B&H Photo Video's used department, and eBay. The first two specialize in second-hand camera gear and publish per-grade pricing. B&H carries a mix of used and refurbished inventory at fewer condition levels. eBay is the private-seller market, and as of August 2026 it is the widest of the four, covering more models than any dealer.

One caveat on eBay worth understanding. We read active listings through eBay's Browse API, which means asking prices, not transaction prices. Sold-price data needs their Marketplace Insights API, which is approval-gated and which we do not have. Dealer prices are asking prices too, so the comparison is consistent, but eBay asks tend to settle below list in a way a dealer's sticker does not. Read an eBay number as the current floor of what sellers want, not as what the last one sold for.

Prices are the item price, which is what every source quotes. Dealers ship domestically free or flat and we do not ask them for a figure. eBay sellers often charge, sometimes a lot: on the 23 August 2026 crawl, 150 of 684 listings added shipping, averaging $20 and running as high as $175. Where a seller quotes a figure we show it under the price and add it up for you; where they quote nothing, usually because it is calculated from your address, the row says "shipping not quoted" rather than implying it is free. When we pick which listing to show, we pick the one that is cheapest to actually receive, not the one with the lowest sticker.

We quote the US market, so non-US sellers are excluded by default. Discontinued gear is the exception. For dead mounts like Four Thirds the US simply does not hold the inventory, and excluding overseas sellers would mean showing an estimate forever while a real market sat one filter away. Those listings are marked with their country of origin. Expect import shipping and possible duty on top of anything flagged that way.

For each model we observe the lowest listed price at each (source, grade) pair. Listings with grades we can't normalize (see condition buckets) and "from / range" markers used when sellers don't actually have inventory at that grade are excluded from the rollup. They still appear in the per-source price table on each camera page so you can audit them, but they don't drive the headline number.

Affiliate disclosure: two of the outbound links here pay us. When a model has an Amazon ASIN curated for it, the "Buy new on Amazon" button earns a small commission if you buy. Every eBay link in the price table carries our eBay Partner Network tag and works the same way. MPB, KEH and B&H links earn us nothing today; if that changes, this paragraph changes with it.

The money doesn't touch the ranking. We show the lowest observed price per source and grade, the crawler writes what it finds, and neither one knows which links pay. If eBay is cheaper we say eBay, and if MPB is cheaper we say MPB. You pay the same either way.

When we show an estimate instead

Some cameras aren't sold by anyone we track. MPB's inventory starts around 2009 and it carries no Four Thirds DSLRs at all; KEH keeps catalog pages for older gear but stocks it only now and then. So for the classic-digital section — the Olympus E-series, the Panasonic L bodies, the Sigma Foveon cameras, the early Nikon and Canon DSLRs — there is frequently nothing live to report.

Showing launch price in that gap would be worse than showing nothing. The Nikon D2X listed at $4,999 in 2005 and changes hands for a couple of hundred dollars today; quoting the MSRP would actively mislead you. Instead those pages carry a typical used price: our own estimate of what a working body in good condition actually costs right now, built from marketplace asking spreads, specialist dealer pricing, and recent sold data.

Estimates are labelled "Typical used" and shown in grey rather than black, so you can always tell one from an observed price. They're editorial judgement, not measurement: treat them as a starting point for what to offer, not a quote. They also never feed the deal score or the percent-of-MSRP figure, both of which stay keyed to real observed listings — a camera priced from an estimate simply doesn't get ranked. And the moment a real listing does appear, it replaces the estimate on the page automatically.

When prices update

A nightly crawl visits each source for every tracked model, parses the listings, and writes a fresh snapshot to the database. Every camera page shows a "last seen" timestamp on each per-source row so you can tell at a glance how recent the data is. The dateModified field in the page's structured data also carries the most recent observation timestamp; this is the signal search engines use to know how often to recheck.

Sources occasionally go silent. If MPB returns no result for a specific (model, condition) pair on a given day, that row simply doesn't appear in the table for that day. We don't fabricate continuity. The price history chart connects observations across gaps with lines so a single sparsely-sampled series still reads as a trend, but the absence of a point does not mean the listing went out of stock; it means the scraper didn't see a listing at that grade that day.

Condition buckets and grade normalization

Every seller has its own grading vocabulary. MPB uses "Like New," "Excellent," "Very Good," "Good," and so on. KEH grades on a numeric "BGN / EX / EX+ / LN-" scale. B&H mostly uses a 1-to-10 numeric scale. Comparing prices across sources requires mapping these onto a common axis, which we do in three normalized buckets:

Mint

Effectively new condition: original packaging, no signs of use. MPB "Like New," KEH "LN" or "LN-", and B&H grade 10.

Excellent

Light use, fully functional, no operational issues. MPB "Excellent," KEH "EX+" or "EX," and B&H grade 8 to 9.

Good

Visible wear, fully functional, no defects affecting use. MPB "Good" or "Well Used," KEH "EX-" or "BGN+," and B&H grade 7.

Fair

Heavier wear, may have small operational quirks (sticky button, faded paint). KEH "BGN," B&H grade 6. Parts-only and not-working listings are excluded.

Poor / Unknown

As-is, parts, damaged. Excluded from the "lowest now" rollup so a parts body can't masquerade as the cheapest deal, but still visible in the per-source table on each camera page.

The mapping isn't perfect. Some grades are genuinely ambiguous, and individual sellers sometimes drift from their own published scale. The per-source price table on every camera page shows both the seller's raw label and our normalized bucket so you can audit any single mapping. If a listing's grade looks wrong to you, the raw label is the source of truth and our bucket is just a comparison aid.

How we compute the deal score

Every camera page leads with a verdict like "At the 90-day low" or "Prices are rising." That headline comes from comparing today's lowest observed price against three windows of price history: the last 7, 30, and 90 days. The lowest price we've ever observed (the "all-time low") is also factored in. The classification rules, in order:

1. If today's lowest price is at or below the all-time low we've ever observed, the headline is "Lowest price we've ever observed." This is the strongest buy signal we surface.
2. If it's at or below the 90-day low, the headline is "At the 90-day low."
3. If it's within 5% of the 90-day low, the headline is "Near the 90-day low."
4. If the 30-day trend is up more than 5%, the headline is "Prices are rising."
5. If today's price is more than 20% above the 90-day low, the headline is "Well above the 90-day low."
6. If today's price is at or above the launch MSRP, the headline is "Selling at or above MSRP," which usually means the camera is discontinued or in short supply.
7. Otherwise, the headline is "Typical pricing right now."

The verdict block reports the exact numbers underneath the headline so you can sanity-check it: current low, MSRP, percent of MSRP, the 90-day low, the all-time low and its date, and the 30-day trend percentage. If fewer than 14 days of history have accumulated in the 90-day window, the verdict block shows a confidence note so you know the score is preliminary.

The deal score is about price timing, not product quality. A camera that's a poor fit for your use case can be at the 90-day low; conversely, a camera that's well-reviewed can be selling above MSRP. The verdict only tells you about the price.

What Should You Buy This Camera doesn't do

A few things the catalog isn't trying to do. Knowing the gaps matters more than pretending they aren't there.

• We don't track every camera. The catalog is hand-picked. If you're shopping for something we don't cover, the deal score won't be there.
• International pricing is out of scope. All prices are USD, sourced from US-facing inventory at the three named sellers. Buying from Japan, Europe, or other regions can be a different market entirely, and we don't try to model that.
• Shutter count, wear history, and per-listing variations aren't reflected. Two MPB listings at the same grade can be meaningfully different when you actually look at the photos. The deal score works at the (grade, source) level, not the listing level.
• Tax, shipping, and seller fees aren't included. The price we report is the listed price, not the out-the-door price, and shipping varies a lot between sellers.
• A lens sold in several mounts can borrow a sibling's price. Third-party glass like the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art exists in a dozen mounts that don't sell for the same money, so each mount gets its own page. Sellers are not so careful: plenty of listings read "Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Lens" and never say which mount. We drop a listing whose title names a different mount, but one that names none can't be contradicted, and we'd rather show that price with a warning than leave the page empty. Affected lenses carry a note above their price table.

A note on reviews

Should You Buy This Camera publishes a small number of editorial reviews written from first-hand experience with specific cameras. Each review is clearly labeled with the author, the dates published and last updated, and a "first-hand" badge when the reviewer has personally shot with the camera (the default). We do not aggregate other people's reviews, generate reviews from feature lists, or stage hands-on time we didn't have.

Most cameras in the catalog don't have an editorial review yet. When a review exists, we emit Schema.org Review structured data linked to the camera Product, including the rating (1 to 5), pros and cons lists, dates, and the reviewer name. When a review doesn't exist, we leave the Review and AggregateRating fields blank rather than fabricate signals.

Editorial reviews are about the camera itself: who it suits, who it doesn't, how it performs across shooting scenarios. The price-timing verdict on each camera page is a separate, data-driven judgment about whether now is a good time to buy, regardless of whether the camera is right for you. Both signals live on the page when they apply; neither one replaces the other.