Costs
I’ve not been on my blog for a while for the past month, due to being too busy. My schedule is getting rather hectic at the moment and I will be running my first Scottish photo workshop in exactly a week’s time from now – on the Isle of Eigg.
So I’ve had a lot of material to prepare for the trip – I’ve now got a lot of tutorials for Photoshop editing, understanding exposure, dynamic range and some background to my own approach to landscape photography. All good stuff.
So whilst preparing for the trip, I made an order for some more Velvia 50 RVP. Only to discover that it’s gone up 43% in price.
I had an idea that you’d be thinking ‘film is dead – it’s getting expensive because no one uses it anymore’. But it’s not just film that’s gone up.
Have you noticed the crazy prices for Nikon and Canon gear, or anything Japanese for that matter? It’s the ecomomy that’s gone down here in the UK, or the strength of the Yen.
Here’s another example: I’ve been thinking about buying a used Mamiya 7 43mm lens. Admittedly, it’s a little bit wider than my usual preference, but I’ve found recently that there has been a few locations requiring such a wide lens. The eBay price is around £650 for a mint one and if my memory is right, the lens used to be around £1,100 new. Not anymore it isn’t. It’s £1,700 before vat (15%). Which takes the lens up to £1995. Just shy of 2K for a lens that should be just over 1K.
My Sekonic light meter (L-608) is a bit on the bashed/worn out side these days so I was looking to replace it. It turns out that if I buy the new L-758 from Sekonic, which has more (unwanted) features than you could shake a stick at, it comes in for exactly what I paid for my 608 seven years ago! I’m curious as to why Sekonic’s prices have stayed the same when everyone else has rocketed their prices? Is it because external light meters aren’t that much in demand?
Photography is rapidly becoming a very expensive pursuit for most of us, and for the pro’s, well it just means having to keep running with the same worn out kit for a bit longer – but that’s nothing new :-)
Apparently all this is mostly down to the exchange rate with Japan, which is doing much better than Britain in the present economic climate. A lens I bought for just over £400 in January is now over £560 (£460 if bought in the USA, £500 if bought in Germany; there are similar differentials for another I bought in June). Perhaps phototrips need to be organised around cheaper shopping opportunities for equipment!
Comment by michael — 7 September, 2009 @ 12:05 pm
I’m looking to buy a Sekonic meter as of this week; I wonder if it would be better to go ahead and buy new, given that I wouldn’t be able to save much money from a used meter which was still in good condition.
Comment by morgangray — 8 September, 2009 @ 2:50 am
I watched a Sekonic 608 go for £280, used on Ebay – a seven year old light meter. The new model goes for £345. I felt that the used price was too high.
Comment by Bruce Percy — 8 September, 2009 @ 7:28 am
I think there was a specific point in February or March where Canon and Nikon upped their prices because they were losing too much money in Japan from overseas sales due to the warped exchange rates. I heard that shops in the UK started refusing to sell gear in the lead up to the changes until the new prices kicked in.
That said, the UK is always an expensive place to get camera gear from, at least for Nikon & Canon. If you go have a look at B&H’s website, you can get them to ship you something over here, add on the VAT you have to pay at import and it’s the same as the best price you can get on the high street here. That’s ridiculous.
Add to that the fact that people living in the USA usually get 5 year warranties on their gear when they purchase the local version instead of the grey import. No such thing over here.
Comment by Niall Connaughton — 8 September, 2009 @ 12:59 pm
I can recommend the L-358 light meter. It is pretty full featured, even does flash metering.
Being ripped off here is not limited to photography. Apple’s pricing is similar. The uk shops hide behind the VAT but even taking that into account we pay a big percentage more
Comment by jeremy — 12 September, 2009 @ 1:48 pm