There is an online photographic magazine called DP Review (https://www.dpreview.com/) which was originally London based but now owned by Amazon and based in Seattle. Although inevitable that personal prejudices will come into play, the formula has always been to do comprehensive reviews of all the new cameras and lenses as they are released and it is an excellent resource if you are contemplating buying a new camera etc.
One of the best parts to this formula is that they have a database of past reviews which is very helpful if you are considering a discontinued past model.
The Cost of Stuff
One of the things I find very odd is the price of EVs – electric vehicles and whilst there are exceptions but they are very much ‘outliers’ the majority seem to be roughly double what an equivalent ICE model would be. As a daily cyclist, I would be delighted if all cars were electric but on the other hand I can’t really see that the current crop are really the answer to anything much.
People talk about ‘range anxiety’ but I have always thought that the time it takes to recharge them is much more of an issue in the real world. However the reason that I am picking on EVs is very much their price, they are way too expensive. The same cannot be said about cameras however, there are other factors at play here…
Price of Cameras
When I bought my Canon D30 back at Christmas 2000, it cost roughly £2,000 plus a lens on top of that. The equivalent today allowing for inflation would be £3,500 and my Canon 1D MkIV which at launch in 2010 cost £5,000 then the inflation equivalent today would be £7,100.
Taking those two examples and comparing them with their equivalent models today and regardless of the brand, they match the current price of ‘pro-summer’ and ‘professional’ camera bodies. The difference in this market though comes less from the price and with most people using their phone cameras , the question of just how many people see buying a camera as that important to them.
Back to DP Review
On their front page in a side column, DP Review has a top 10 list of “The Most Popular…” in various categories and today it made me do a double take ! I think that the listing is made up from how many people accessed the particular camera review from their website that day.
Camera companies don’t release new models immediately before Christmas but the last model to be released closest to by Canon was an upgrade of their R6 to a Mark II version and you would expect that to top the ratings which it did but the second and third spot rather threw me, the Canon 5DS and 5DSR
I have a 5DS and love it and its 50.6 mpx sensor. But to put this into perspective, both models were launched in June 2015 and whilst they cost around £3,600 then, you can pick them up today for less than £1,500 second hand and no, they are not ‘action’ or wildlife cameras but they do everything else and very well.
