Nice, I guess I'll hold off on upgrading to the is version of the 70-200 f4.
There was a disagreement on the 15-85 thread about whether the street price would be lower than msrp or not. I'm thinking it might end up being higher!
Bernie_King wrote:
In January the dollar dropped to 88 Yen -- Today it's at 92 and a week or so ago it was 98. I don't think it's the exchange rates that are making this happen. More than likely a response to the current shortages and high demand. Once the supply levels rebound, the prices will most likely drop.
Either that or they figured that if people will pay the money for Nikon and Sony glass, why not Canon
Somehow I can't see this as supply and demand. The recession is not over and most people are not spending like they once did.
Purely profit taking and the worthless dollar is part of the cause..
B&H knows that all will think that it is the Yen/dollar thing ... and is making more profit. Well, I don't know that of course ... but I wonder if Canons price raises are not a great cover for a bit of extra profit at the retails level.
I think that companies are learning that we will pay anything. I suspect that some of us here shooting birds for a hoby may have upwards of $20,000 invested - maybe more? Sell to magazines and a few prints here and there and one can recoup their investment in less that 47 years. If you keep busy that is.
They are just closing up to match the prices we pay for stuff here in Canada. Ok not quite but you guys aren't getting it that bad honestly can be worse.
Prices go up and down quite a bit. When I bought the 300/2.8L non-IS is 1993/1994 or so, it was $4600 @ B&H. Later it dropped to $3700-ish, and was somewhere around that price a few years before (1990?), so a little movement is not unexpected. That being said these increases across the board do seem a bit much.
Thing is B&H is not the above all and end all of retailers...you can find lenses for hundreds of dollars cheaper elsewhere. Yea, prices got a bit higher, but there's not need to get bent over as hard as B&H will do you. Long live Buydig, Beach camera and Abe's of Maine--keep it up guys.
globalkiwi wrote:
The upward trajectory in prices (both used & new) has been underway for a while - there's been several threads here on FM about exactly that.
Not really for the large superteles (500/600.) There was basically one increase in the last 3 years (about 5% for the currency readjustment earlier this year.) Now they've gone up 8-9% in the last couple days. So that's a 17% increase just this year for the 600. No purchase for me (and I'd even been hoping the 800 would stay below $11,000 and trend downwards. Guess my bank account is safe for the time being. )
it's a little puzzling that we have had so many (OK, a couple) of price rises this year when we're in the middle of a recession and deflationary pressures are mounting everywhere else in the economy. I understand the dollar/yen issue but I also understand economics 101 that suggests that higher prices often result in lower volumes.
The cynic in me wonders if this is as much to do with the release of the 7D and the additional demand for lenses it's expected to create.
