These are the list price for the new EOS-1D Mark IV:

List Price (body only)
£4499 (UK)
$ 4999 (US)
euros 4599 (EU)

Now let me play a little bit with the calculator using the exchange rate as today :

4999$= 3050£ if you add the local tax (English VAT) it would be: 3500£

4999$= 3377euros if you add the local tax (French TVA, for example) it would be: 3900euros

The difference with the european price is big: 700euros (1000$) but with the English one it's astonishing: 1000£!!!!! (1600$), for the american people: ask yourself if you would pay: 7500$ for this camera... that the price an English has to pay (edited as Chris is right ;-) see below)

So the conclusion: Canon makes a lot of money on the backs of the UK and European citizens

this is not something new - most lens and cameras the uk pay more

You are working it out on the value 0f the US$ at the moment, you have to remember thatA$$ has fallen out of the US$. If you look where it was even 6months ago, the prices would be a lot closer.

Canon makes a lot of money off everyone who isn't in the USA. Although not as high as the UK and Europe, I find it difficult to understand how in Canada the 7D body only is $2099 CDN which with our current exchange rate that works out to $1937 USD. In the USA it's $1699.

Everyone pays big except those buying in the USA.

joshkrause:
Everyone pays big except those buying in the USA

Or Canadians buying in the US. You may not remember it but just a year or two ego, most Canadians were buying all the equipment in the US. I started to buy again in Canada when the prices went down two years ago. Now I am back buying at B&H.

here in Holland, the lowest price for the eos-1 m.IV is 4155 euros, including all taxes.

Gavin Sim wrote:
this is not something new - most lens and cameras the uk pay more

True, unfortunately I just wanted to point out the HUGE difference that does not make any business sense: people will import their camera from the US: as I have proved even if you add VAT (and even custom duty) you are still way below what you would have to pay in the UK or Europe.

The result: stores in the UK and Europe won't sell canon cameras, they will go toward other makers and it will become more and more difficult to find stores wanting to deal with canon stuff.

Considering how much the yen climbed they could make an effort or they should expect their sales to continue to go down. Good time for Pentax and Sony to keep up with the two big players Nikon and Canon.

FredM wrote:

The difference with the european price is big: 700euros (1000$) but with the English one it's astonishing: 1000£!!!!! (1600$), for the american people: ask yourself if you would pay: 7500$ for this camera... that the price an English has to pay (not considering the price to replace some lenses as it is not a FF anymore...)


The 1D series has never been a full frame camera, the 1Ds series is the FF pro model.

True, unfortunately I just wanted to point out the HUGE difference that does not make any business sense: people will import their camera from the US: as I have proved even if you add VAT (and even custom duty) you are still way below what you would have to pay in the UK or Europe.

Florist says that you can get it in Holland for 4155 euros including taxes. B&H, who is most likely the cheapest reliable retailer in the US sells it for $4999.95 (plus tax for those who have to pay it). It looks to me like the days when people from EU imported from the US may be over.

FredM wrote:
These are the list price for the new EOS-1D Mark IV:

List Price (body only)
£4499 (UK)
$ 4999 (US)
euros 4599 (EU)

Now let me play a little bit with the calculator using the exchange rate as today :

4999$= 3050£ if you add the local tax (English VAT) it would be: 3500£

4999$= 3377euros if you add the local tax (French TVA, for example) it would be: 3900euros

The difference with the european price is big: 700euros (1000$) but with the English one it's astonishing: 1000£!!!!! (1600$), for the american people: ask yourself if you would pay: 7500$ for this camera... that the price an English has to pay (not considering the price to replace some lenses as it is not a FF anymore...)

So the conclusion: Canon makes a lot of money on the backs of the UK and European citizens




Maybe it just costs more for Canon to do business in Europe. When comparing to the US, don't forget that if we buy locally (in out state) we have to pay additional tax also ... here in California that is almost 10%.

I try to buy everything in the US. I ask for someone to pick stuff up for me or actually wait until I go there. Otherwise the option is to look at far east options where the price is equivalent to B&H or Adorama. The problem then obviously becomes the VAT which is high. Some far east sites offer "no vat" and they're honest, so if you are charged they reimburse you. (This has actually happened to me a few times). The bottom line is - it is ridiculous to buy Canon bodies and lenses at high street shops here in the UK (or for that matter anywhere in Europe - if you have the option of an American connection - I checked places in France and Belgium and they are not much better)

Chris Cooke wrote:
FredM wrote:

The difference with the european price is big: 700euros (1000$) but with the English one it's astonishing: 1000£!!!!! (1600$), for the american people: ask yourself if you would pay: 7500$ for this camera... that the price an English has to pay (not considering the price to replace some lenses as it is not a FF anymore...)


The 1D series has never been a full frame camera, the 1Ds series is the FF pro model.

True my mistake, sorry, I edited the original post. The 5D was FF and became 1.3 with the 7D but the 1D was always 1.3, sorry.

Gavin Sim wrote:

this is not something new - most lens and cameras the uk pay more

And it's not just Canon either.

Remember, the US is a single, vast, unified somewhat monolithic market. Canon USA imports to -and services- that market.

keithreeder wrote:
Gavin Sim wrote:

this is not something new - most lens and cameras the uk pay more

And it's not just Canon either.


I'm sure there are 25 countries just in Europe that pays more than UK. The prices are not very expensive there. It's just that you always like to compare it with the lowest price any country has.

How much of the price difference is due to European VAT taxes? That is something Canon has no control over. Furthermore, Europeans are getting a lot more services from their governments, especially healthcare. It seems to me to be mostly a difference in the way the US and Europe raise money from their respective citizens. I was a wholesale camera salesman in the US for over thirty years, and for the vast majority of that time, we had a grey market problem with foreign goods flooding our markets. The US is pushing a cheap dollar in oder to boost our exports. The Europeans favor a strong currency.These monitary policies
also have a lot to due with the price gap.

jim allison wrote:

Europeans are getting a lot more services from their governments, especially healthcare.

We pay for that in tax and National Insurance, Jim - I don't think I'm paying for other people's health care through my camera purchases yet..!

jim allison wrote:
How much of the price difference is due to European VAT taxes? That is something Canon has no control over. Furthermore, Europeans are getting a lot more services from their governments, especially healthcare. It seems to me to be mostly a difference in the way the US and Europe raise money from their respective citizens. I was a wholesale camera salesman in the US for over thirty years, and for the vast majority of that time, we had a grey market problem with foreign goods flooding our markets. The US is pushing a cheap dollar in oder to boost our exports. The Europeans favor a strong currency.These monitary policies
also have a lot to due with the price gap.

It's funny that so many people from the USA talk about Europe like it was one country.
We don't have the same VAT tax.
We don't have the same governments service
We don't have the same healtcare system
We don't have the same monitary policies
We don't have the same currency
Not even all the countries that belong to the EU have the same of any of those 5 things.

In Finland 1DmIV has a tag of 4800,00 euros incl taxes (VAT 22%)

At least Jim recognised that there is life outside of the US, Lars - many of his countrymen haven't even figured that out yet!

FredM wrote:
Chris Cooke wrote:
FredM wrote:

The difference with the european price is big: 700euros (1000$) but with the English one it's astonishing: 1000£!!!!! (1600$), for the american people: ask yourself if you would pay: 7500$ for this camera... that the price an English has to pay (not considering the price to replace some lenses as it is not a FF anymore...)


The 1D series has never been a full frame camera, the 1Ds series is the FF pro model.

True my mistake, sorry, I edited the original post. The 5D was FF and became 1.3 with the 7D but the 1D was always 1.3, sorry.
5D was FF, 5D2 also FF , the 7D is a whole new line and it's 1.6 not 1.3, and yes the 1D series have all been 1.3

I've always seen a difference between the Canadian and US exchange rate,
and the price differences of products.
camera equipment, magazines, books stand out as some of the worst ones.
even when the Canadian $ was worth more than the US $, the $ amount was still higher in Canada.

jim allison wrote:
How much of the price difference is due to European VAT taxes? That is something Canon has no control over. Furthermore, Europeans are getting a lot more services from their governments, especially healthcare. It seems to me to be mostly a difference in the way the US and Europe raise money from their respective citizens. I was a wholesale camera salesman in the US for over thirty years, and for the vast majority of that time, we had a grey market problem with foreign goods flooding our markets. The US is pushing a cheap dollar in oder to boost our exports. The Europeans favor a strong currency.These monitary policies
also have a lot to due with the price gap.

That's why in my original post I gave the price with and without some of the VAT that could be added to the US-converted price. The Canon stuff is made in Japan, they have their own problem of tax, unemployment, retirement, etc. but if you consider the price of the Canon's stuff you can reasonnably assume they make quite some money when they sell it in the US why do they need to add on top of it for some countries to make even more money?

I'm aware of the VAT between the European countries and what it provides to us but even if you don't take this into account the price is higher in the EU/UK than in the US...

The differences in the VAT between the various european countries is ridiculous, like in the US: you just have to drive in another state to buy your camera cheaper and come back, in the EU there is no border (inside) so high VAT just push the people to move more to buy things...I cannot imagine the shipping from japan to the UK or the EU to be that expensive that they have to charge more, especially considering that the price per container/day of shipping collapsed in the past months.

keithreeder wrote:
At least Jim recognised that there is life outside of the US, Lars - many of his countrymen haven't even figured that out yet!



Doesn't sending millions of us to Europe and Asia in the 1940s seem to negate your theory.

I think we are above this kind of talk here.

python2000 wrote:
keithreeder wrote:
At least Jim recognised that there is life outside of the US, Lars - many of his countrymen haven't even figured that out yet!



Doesn't sending millions of us to Europe and Asia in the 1940s seem to negate your theory.

I think we are above this kind of talk here.



Why go back to 1940s?. You are still sending a lot of people to Asia and only a couple of years ago to Europe also

python2000 wrote:

I think we are above this kind of talk here.

It wasn't a pop, it was an easily-supported observation.

There's hardly a day goes by without a thread getting started about some UK or Europe-specific thing or other (our camera prices are a typical subject - lets talk about the 7D for a moment), and someone from your side of the pond will, 100% guaranteed, go to great lengths about the original poster being cheap for complaining about a camera that only costs $1699 (or whatever), completely missing the point that the discussion is about the fact that the camera costs £1699 in the UK (and more elsewhere in Europe) which is $2780 today.

Happens every single time, regardless of the number of clues left in the post, or in the location of the original poster...