Camera prices – Have the Japanese taken leave of their senses?

[Andrew Reid]

Pre-tarrifs and recent inflation up-tick, I was wondering how sustainable $7000 was for a flagship mirrorless camera, or $3200+tax for a mid-range camera like the S1 II ($4k with kit lens), and now we have the first joke camera with bad AF for $850 thanks to Fujifilm.

https://www.eoshd.com/news/camera-prices-have-the-japanese-taken-leave-of-their-senses/

Now we're about to add more inflation and tarrifs to these numbers, so it's possible that by the end of the year a new mid-range full frame camera will be released to the market for over $4500, and that the Sony a1 III might cost $9000.

At what point does the line get crossed for you guys, when will you stop buying?

[Tim Sewell]

The only brand new cameras I've bought (in the digital age) were the GH4 and, more recently my FX30 (which is exceptional VFM). Unfortunately I've just had to sell the FX30 because I can't afford a decent Sony B-cam for it and instead bought 2 secondhand S5s.

The only thing I've seen recently that I've thought was well-priced was the XM-5, but too much for a fun purchase even then.

It's not only bodies, though. Prices for even fairly quotidian lenses are just laughable these days.

[Phil A]

It's quite wild how the prices are going up. I'm a hobbyist so I'm too cheap to spend more than 2k, maaaybe 2.5k-ish, on a camera body. I'm always waiting for the inevitable massive price drops that come just a few months after release or try to find a used one. With the S1 II going up so far and the US tariffs, I wouldn't be surprised if a Sony A7V will go over 3k too.

An additional point of frustration is that I picked Fujifilm and their cameras are just straight up not available to buy. X100VI? Sure, for a 500 EUR mark-up from a scalper. X-M5? Never really materialized. I'm holding on to my X-T4 as a second body next to the X-H2s because I couldn't find a X-M5 when it came out. A brand specific issue is also that they have just too many models with not real focus. X-Pro, X-E, X-M, X-S, X-T (in two flavors), X-H, X-Hs.

Zero interest in the new gimmick they released, I can honestly not see who this is meant for. If you love INSTAX (which I do and own), this does not scratch that itch.

[PannySVHS]

Used S5 cameras are being sold for used GH5 prices. Great value! @Tim Sewell

Anyone using an A7IV, how is battery life, overheating, S35 readout and 4K quality, codec and noise characteristics at lowlight and higher Isos?

S1II has flagship specs and a mid tier body, selling for a flagship price. So it seems okish, wheras the og S1 and S5 felt like bargains back then.

It will be interesting to see if used cameras like Lumix S line will rise in reaction to the higher priced new models.

[Tim Sewell]

1 minute ago, PannySVHS said:

Used S5 cameras are being sold for used GH5 prices. Great value! @Tim Sewell

Got them around £600GBP each - one in excellent condition, one as-new. So yeah - great value. And apart from ease of use (the FX30 has such great ergos, I think) I don't really feel like I've lost anything (apart from video AF, which I don't really use except for family fun vids, which the S5 can still keep up with). I even had some money left over after selling the FX30 and the A6600 which allowed me to complete my Takumar set with the 85mm, get the Lumix 20-60 kit lens, a bunch of batteries and some extra cards. So I'm not complaining at all.

[eatstoomuchjam]

At the high end, I have no idea right now what would convince me to buy anything.  I kind of have what feel like "endgame" cameras.  What will improve on the Ursa Cine 12K?  Especially if it gets AF (I think BMD hinted that there are phase detection pixels in there somewhere).  Improve on the Ronin 4D?  Maybe if they released a new one with both PDAF and LIDAR.  For something lighter than UC12K, but still set up for sticks?  I have my K-X.  Want something even smaller/lighter?  I have an R5 and the OG Komodo.  For travel, the GFX 100 II for photos and very nice video - or the R5/Pocket 3 if I want to carry nothing bigger than a 12L backpack.

When the R5 II is a lot cheaper, I could see trading in my OG R5 toward it.  No rush there at all.  When the Pyxis 12K hits the used market, maybe I'd swap out something else for it?  The R5 is in many ways the nemesis of me buying small cameras like the S9.  Every time I think about it, I look one one of the sites that lets you compare camera sizes and realize that the only reason the R5 is bigger is that it has an EVF (which I like) and a grip (which matters less with small lenses, but I don't dislike having it with them either).

But part of my plan in the first part of this year was to stack my stuff before tariffs hit in force since prices for everything would be going up.  Now my wallet is crying and no real reason to get any sort of new camera for a while.  Even the Insta360 X5 - I bought it, played with it, decided it won't give me $700 of enjoyment that my older One RS 360 edition isn't giving me, and it's back in the box and getting sent back for a refund today.  If it'd been closer to $300, I'd have kept it and sold the other.  But $700, going past the emotional moment of playing with it and having fun, is silly for something that will still have much worse quality than the Pocket 3.

[MrSMW]

Ricoh GRiii vs 1/2 a Fuji camera? 
Hmmm…

[ntblowz]

If the new entry camera Sony FX2 is costing $3500 I can't imagine how much price hike will FX3II gonna be.

But they will be just US problems ha.

[akasian]

Seems like Nikon is the only one selling reasonably priced gear right now.

[MrSMW]

7 minutes ago, ntblowz said:

But they will be just US problems ha

I don’t think so and the rest of the world is facing price hikes to help cover the the stupidity/costs.

[EduPortas]

Well, the market is basically saturated.

Since dealers are selling less units, each unit has to be sold a higher cost. That's it.

Those insane prices clearly show this trend in a mature luxury market ( in the age of the cell phone a dedicated camera is a luxury).

No surprise all camera manufacturers have gone the Fuji way: full "new-retro" models for Pentax, Fujifilm and Nikon. Only Canon and Sony have delayed the retro trend.

So the only way for the camera market is backwards, not through, to quote a famous movie. 

[Clark Nikolai]

12 hours ago, Phil A said:

Zero interest in the new gimmick they released, I can honestly not see who this is meant for.

I suspect they don't know for sure but are seeing "the kids" buy used early digital cameras and having fun shooting with them so they're making a camera for them. Also the half-frame thing is bizarre. Half frame doesn't apply with digital. You're not saving on film or processing. Maybe the holding-horizontal-but-shooting-vertical thing is what they're going for. 

So, the fun of shooting. For me it's too much money for what I might play with for a month at most. Maybe super rich people will buy them as stocking stuffers for their nieces (who already have a hundred gadgets)...

[ntblowz]

6 hours ago, MrSMW said:

I don’t think so and the rest of the world is facing price hikes to help cover the the stupidity/costs.

Except China... they certainly have their own price vs the world.

Here in NZ we pay stupidly high prices vs the world since the beginning of the time, S1RII is like over US$4000 haha, R5II is actually cheaper than S1RII in here.

[Tim Sewell]

4 hours ago, EduPortas said:

Only Canon and Sony have delayed the retro trend.

I'd love to see a digital Canonet!

[Thpriest]

I think the price hike is almost everywhere, not just the camera market. Just look at cars over the last 5 years. The Dacia Sandero used to have a model that cost around 8000€, now the cheapest is 14000€. Admittedly they have improved but for nearly double the price?

As for housing it’s mental. There’s inflation everywhere other than wages. If wages were inline with goods price hikes then we probably wouldn’t be complaining (as much!). At least that’s what I make of it. 

[Davide DB]

 

On one hand, @EduPortas totally nailed it: price hikes are pretty much everywhere. This is a mature luxury market, so manufacturers can kind of do whatever they want. An item's price really just comes down to what a customer's willing to fork over. Before they even put stuff out, they do all these market studies. Nowadays, a camera's a luxury item, while a smartphone? That's a commodity.

Then again, the market's shrunk so much that all the costs just get dumped straight onto us, the customers. We've talked about this tons before, and honestly, my take on it is still spot-on:

 

Personally, I'm always looking at the underwater photography and video gear market, and prices there are just going through the roof. If the camera market itself is a niche, just imagine the market for people who take cameras underwater – that's like the niche of the niche!

Anyway, the biggest jump in prices happened around the pre/post-pandemic time. After that, things stayed pretty steady. But now, with those American tariffs, we're seeing price increases hitting the whole world. Basically, manufacturers are just spreading those tariff-driven price hikes across every market globally.

For example, let's look at a Nauticam underwater housing (from Hong Kong) for the Nauticam Sony Alpha 2020 (for A9II and A7RIV). The price was $3048 USD in June 2020, then it went up to $4127 USD in July 2022, and it's currently $4700 USD as of May 2025.

The Nauticam Sony Alpha 1 housing cost $4540 USD in July 2022, and its price remained pretty much unchanged until the Trump mess, when the price jumped to $5000 USD.

 

[ND64]

1 hour ago, Thpriest said:

Dacia Sandero used to have a model that cost around 8000€, now the cheapest is 14000€.

A lot of EU regulations happened in that period tho, and regulations are costly.