(commentary)
Just for the heck of it, I decided to do a quick survey of pricing on a number of much talked about and popular interchangeable lens camera bodies and then place it in descending order of price (I’m using B&H prices as of 1/10/2015, body only models, and rounded to the nearest dollar):
- Canon 1Dx — US$6799
- Nikon D4s — US$6497
- Canon 5DIII — US$3099
- Nikon D810 — US$2997
- Nikon Df — US$2747
- Sony A7s — US$2498
- Nikon D750 — US$2297
- Sony A7r — US$2098
- Sony A99 — US$1998
- Canon 7DII — US$1799
- Canon 6D — US$1799
- Sony A7II — US$1698
- Panasonic GH4 — US$1698
- Samsung NX1 — US$1500
- Nikon D610 — US$1497
- Sony A7 — US$1298
- Olympus E-M1 — US$1200
- Fujifilm X-T1 — US$1199
- Canon 70D — US$999
- Sony A77II — US$998
- Nikon D7100 — US$997
- Nikon D5500 — US$897
- Pentax K-3 — US$897
- Fujifilm X-E2 — US$799
- Canon 60D — US$699
- Olympus E-M10 — US$699
- Nikon D5300 — US$697
- Olympus E-M5 — US$599
- Sony A6000 — US$548
- Nikon D5200 — US$547
- Canon T3i — US$499
- Pentax K-5 IIs — US$497
- Fujifilm X-E1 — US$449
- Sony A5100 — US$448
- Pentax K-50 — US$397
I did a little bit of price grouping in the list to help you parse the information. A couple of “bargains” stood out to me, both models not long for the world: Sony A7 and Olympus E-M5. Those are darned good close-out prices for those very competent cameras. The Sony A6000 is also aggressively priced now that Nikon has bumped the price on the D5xxx series. Meanwhile, the Nikon Df and Sony A7s both seem a bit overpriced, though both are lower volume speciality cameras.
Adding lenses into the equation, things get considerably more complicated, as we have to evaluate lens quality to make any sense of what are bargains versus what are just logical bundles. I’m not going to try to do that today.
Upon reflection, I’m going to have to change something I’ve been writing just a bit. Yes, the US$500-1000 range is where most of the camera buying has been and continues to be in terms of unit volume, but it’s the US$1500-2500 range that the camera makers really want to sell in. If your memory goes back far enough, cameras like the Nikon D100 came out in that price range very early in the DSLR era, and we’re still seeing plenty of action from the makers in that higher price point range.
This actually bodes well for a D300s replacement, by the way. It would fit right in that US$1500-2500 range that the camera makers really want to sell at. A D7200 won’t hit that point (it’ll be in a pricing group just lower than that, one that eventually devolves to US$999 for a body, just as it has with the D7100).
