No deals are live yet. This page exists now so you can decide what to buy today and what to wait for — and so it is already here, ranked and indexed, when the sale starts. When Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals go live in November we will post the real ones on this page, with the same live Amazon prices every other page on this site uses. Until then, everything below is either a documented fact about prior years' sales (with the source linked) or our current top pick in each category at today's price. We do not predict discounts, we do not invent percentages, and we will not dress a normal price up as a deal.
What has historically discounted — and what rarely does
Camera gear does not discount evenly. Reading last year's published recaps, the pattern is consistent enough to plan around, as long as you treat it as history and not a promise.
| Product class | What happened in the 2025 sales (documented) | Our read |
|---|
| Entry-level & previous-gen camera bodies | Retailers took $100 off the Sony ZV-E10 and $80 off the Canon EOS R50 (Photography Panel, Luminous Landscape). Daily Camera News recorded $250 off the Sony a6400 and $150 off the ZV-1 II. The Nikon Z30 kit and the Canon R100 kit both saw headline cuts. | Reliably discounts. The best class to wait for. |
| Full-frame bodies | The deepest dollar cuts of the season were here — Luminous Landscape listed the Sony A7 IV down $700 and the Nikon Z8 down $800. | Big numbers, but mostly above a beginner budget. |
| Fujifilm bodies | Modest: Digital Camera World listed the X-S20 at $100 off, the X-T50 at $100 off and the X-T5 at $100 off, with the official deals running into January. | Rarely deep. Do not wait on a Fujifilm for a bargain. |
| First-party budget primes | Luminous Landscape listed the Nikon Z 40mm f/2 at $100 off — a large fraction of its price. | Sometimes discounts, and when it does the percentage is big. |
| Sigma / Tamron lenses | Luminous Landscape reported $100–$300 off "various models" through early December. | Usually discounts across the range. Worth waiting for. |
| Gimbals | Gimbal Review recorded the DJI RS 4 at $459 (from $549), the RS 3 Mini at $189 (from $237) and the Zhiyun Crane 4 at $599 (from $669), with Zhiyun cuts of "$20–$100". | Discounts, though often on last year's model rather than the newest. |
| SD cards & portable SSDs | Luminous Landscape called memory cards "the deepest discounts of the year", with SanDisk and Lexar cards listed at 37–42% off. | Reliably and deeply discounts. Never pay full price in November. |
| Peak Design (straps, bags, tripods) | Luminous Landscape noted Peak Design products "rarely see discounts" and flagged a 30% tripod cut as unusual. | Rarely. If one appears, it is a real event. |
| Brand-new releases | Not represented in any recap we read; the discounted bodies were all a generation or more old. | Rarely discounts in its first season. Buy on need, not on hope. |
Two cautions. Those figures are what specific retailers did in one year; they are not a floor for 2026, and tariff-driven price changes since (Fujifilm raised US prices twice in 2025, per DPReview) mean a "sale" can simply return an item to last year's price. Judge a deal against what the product cost in October, not against the crossed-out number.
Buy now, or wait for November?
The honest call, class by class, given what the history above supports:
| If you're buying… | Our call | Why |
|---|
| An entry-level mirrorless body (ZV-E10, R50, Z30, a6400 class) | Wait if you can | The class that discounted most consistently last year. |
| A camera for a specific event before November | Buy now | A saving you cannot use is not a saving. Missing the trip costs more. |
| A Fujifilm body | Buy when you need it | Documented cuts were modest; waiting bought little. |
| A Sigma or Tamron lens | Wait | Both brands ran season-wide promotions last year. |
| A first-party nifty fifty | Either | Cheap enough that the dollar saving is small even when it does discount. |
| A gimbal | Wait, and consider last year's model | The previous generation is where the deeper cuts landed. |
| SD cards, SSDs | Wait — unless you need one this week | Deep, reliable discounts; storage is the safest thing to wait for. |
| Peak Design anything | Buy now | Rarely discounts; a wait usually buys nothing. |
| A stocking-stuffer under $50 | Buy now | The possible saving is a few dollars; the stock-out risk is real. |
When the sales run
Amazon has not announced its 2026 dates as of our September check. For reference, its Black Friday Week and Cyber Monday events ran November 21 – December 2 in 2024 and November 20 – December 1 in 2025 (Amazon, 2024; About Amazon, 2025) — roughly the twelve days ending on Cyber Monday. In 2026 Black Friday falls on November 27 and Cyber Monday on November 30. Camera-specific retailers and the manufacturers themselves ran deals on their own calendars, several stretching into December and, in Fujifilm's case, January. We will update this section when dates are published.
Our current top picks, at today's price
The list below is the #1 pick from each of our main rankings, with the live Amazon price our data layer holds for it right now — not a deal, just the honest baseline. When a real discount appears on one of these in November, this is the number it will be measured against. Every pick links to the full comparison where it won, so you can see the score breakdown and what it gives up.
How to tell a real Black Friday deal from a dressed-up one
Compare against October, not the list price
The crossed-out "was" price on a listing is often the manufacturer's suggested price, which many products have not sold at for months. The number that matters is what the item actually cost the week before the sale. Our top-picks list above is a public record of exactly that: today's live price, date-stamped. If a November "deal" is not below it, it is not a deal.
Watch for kit swaps
A body-only listing and a body-with-kit-lens listing are different products at different prices, and a sale banner does not always say which one it is quoting. Last year's recaps show the kit bundles often carried the bigger headline cut. Check what is actually in the box before you compare two numbers.
Gray-market and third-party sellers
On a marketplace, the cheapest listing is sometimes an import without a US warranty or a third-party seller with a different return policy. On Amazon, check who the seller is and whether the item is fulfilled by Amazon before you trust a price that is far below everyone else's.
The previous generation is the sweet spot
The pattern across every category last year: the newest model held its price, the model it replaced dropped hard. For beginner gear that is a gift, because the previous generation is usually more than good enough. Our rankings already say when that is the case — the DJI RS 3 Mini, the DJI Mic 2 and the Rode Wireless GO II are all ranked with a "buy it when the discount is real" caveat, and November is when that caveat tends to come true.
What we will and will not post here
When the sale is live, this page will list deals on products we already rank — with the live price from Amazon's API, the date it was checked, and a link to the ranking where we explain what the product is actually like. We will not post deals on products we have not researched just because the percentage looks good, we will not quote a discount we have not seen with our own data, and if a price goes back up the number here goes with it. That is the same rule the rest of the site runs on; a sale does not suspend it.
