Cameras and lenses can seem more expensive than ever, but a lot of that is out of the manufacturers’ hands
Camera prices, like most other prices, are going up. Part of this has been manufacturers focusing on high-end users, because they tend to buy the higher-margin products. But even attempts at making more accessible cameras can seem wildly expensive, compared to the prices we remember paying.
And that’s not a question of manufacturers being foolish or greedy. Whether we like it or not, we are living through a period of higher inflation than we’re used to.
This is the first of a two-part series looking at why the perspective on cameras’ prices in our reviews can seem out-of-step with other people’s initial reactions, on the day of launch.
Many of us lived through a more than twenty-year period of relatively low inflation. Prices of most things rose by around 2% per year, the cost of electronics fell, partly with the outsourcing of manufacture and through increased efficiencies and economies of scale. Wages typically kept pace with inflation, so things didn’t feel more expensive. Large sensor digital cameras got cheaper at first, then settled into a pattern of improving while maintaining their existing price.
Sadly, that’s no longer the world we live in. It’s impossible to enumerate all the factors that got us to here without spiraling off into discussions of politics, but there have been a host of inflationary pressures over the past few years. Whether it’s supply-chain shocks, tariffs, wars putting pressure on oil and gas prices or out-of-control demand for processors and RAM, there’s more pushing prices up than encouraging them to drop.
Manufacturer’s materials and energy costs have gone up. Their component prices have become erratic. Their wages have gone up. Their logistics costs have increased. They cannot make cameras for the prices we used to pay. And, because of the way inflation works, the $1000 you had planned for your next purchase simply isn’t worth as much as that figure have been, five or six years ago.
I’m not trying to defend inflation, or suggesting you should (or even can) just decide it doesn’t matter.
I suspect it’s not just me who finds myself marveling at articles or footage from the 70’s showing a pint of beer priced in pennies or a gallon of ‘gas’ in cents. To a more modern ear, that just seems unimaginable, and it’s hard to see how we got from there to where we are. For most of my adult life, the changes have been incremental enough that I didn’t notice the jump. But thinking back to when I was at college, a pint in my favorite pub was £1.36. I visited the same pub this summer, and it was £5.30. Those little changes have ramped up into big ones in the past few years, and now the prices of my own yesteryears are beginning to seem impossibly distant.
The same thing is happening with cameras, and just about all manufactured products: the value of money is dropping faster than any reduction in the cost of electronics (and a lot of key components are being bought for AI, before it can get anywhere near consumer products). Also, there’s every chance that it’s been some time since you last bought a new camera, and that precisely remembered reference point is no longer realistic.
None of which is to say that we have to like it. I’m not trying to defend it, or suggesting you should (or even can) just decide it doesn’t matter. But getting frustrated about it or insisting that the latest camera should cost what your last one did, pre-pandemic, isn’t going to change things. None of us enjoys it, but pretending inflation doesn’t exist or that rising prices are down to manufacturer misjudgment or greed doesn’t get you anywhere useful.
Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add DPReview as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.