I've long been aware of gray market and fortunately never been burned.

I knew about the gray market, too, and that's why the sales guy had to lie to me to sell me the camera. It isn't worth saving $50-100to lose your warranty. I knew that Nikon didn't honor the warranty on gray market stuff but it never occurred to me that the company wouldn't fix any out-of-warranty camera they made and still had parts for at a factory service center at the owner's expense.

I don't know how the gray market cameras actually get distributed to the U.S., but Nikon does, and it could stop the practice if it wanted to. I don't see gray market cameras made by any other company advertised here.

I think Pentax, Minolta, Miranda and later on, Olympus film cameras have always fit into niche markets and all of them have made models that took good pictures. I bought my first 35mm camera while I was in the Air Force, a Nikkorex F that I think was actually made by Miranda. It was completely manual and I learned to set the shutter speed and aperture by reading the recommendations for "bright sunlight", "cloudy bright with distinct shadows" and "overcast with no shadows" that used to come printed in the instructions that came with each roll of Kodak film. I had already pretty well calibrated my eyeballs by the time I bought my first light meter (a Sekonic II as I recall).