It’s that time of year again. The special deals and rebates are cranking up trying to get you to purchase something for the holidays.
But an interesting thing has popped up this year in the ILC Triopoly in terms of camera bodies. If I had to generalize I’d say this:
- Sony is most heavily pushing much older cameras (A5000, A6000, and the A7II (not s or r)).
- Nikon is most heavily pushing their upper end best sellers (D500, D750, D810).
- Canon is somewhere in the middle, heavily pushing a range of crop sensor bodies.
This has to be strategic. But what does it mean?
I’m not sure I know. The sensor shortage through much of the mid-year has distorted inventories and production, so I’m sure that is a factor for Sony and Nikon (Canon makes their own sensors and wasn’t affected for the mirrorless and DSLR lineups, though they were for their compact cameras).
As always, there’s the specter of soon-to-be-iterated here, too. For Sony, the A7II is due for iteration. For Nikon, the D750 and D810 are due for iteration. For Canon, many of their crop sensor models are all due for iteration.
Nikon’s body + grip specials for Black Friday on the D500 and D810 are definitely good bargains. Even if you aren’t going to use the vertical grip, you can certainly turn around and sell it easily and pick up some extra dollars, much as many DX users have been doing with kit lenses. Just note that the D810 almost certainly will be updated in 2017.
