[Rufus]

A really cheap DSLR? Say £200 / 500AUD?

[shuttertalk]

hm... i dunno. i doubt it will be very soon - as that segment is still strongly occupied by consumer digicams. manufacturers would be shooting themselves in the foot if they did... or would they?

All I know is that the EOS 300D kit costs about 1600-1800 AUD at the moment... 500 AUD is a long way to go..

[peter]

i dont think there is any way that it will ever go that low ..
price inflation is once factor ..
but look at the standard Film SLR's ...
even though they have become pretty old ..
youd still have to pay around 500 dollars for a good one ..
so it unlikely that digital SLRs (something much newer) would go to that price any time soon ..

[adam]

You should see some soon (or some sort of cheap imitation) most likely a generic brand coming from an asian country

[shuttertalk]

Or maybe Russian... there used to be a brand (Kiev??) that made dodgy SLRs...

Some from china too, where they put a brick inside the camera to make it feel heavy..

[peter]

do they really put brick in them ?

[shuttertalk]

Hehe, maybe not a brick, but some sort of weight. I saw it on TV once, they broke open the camera, and there was like metal on the bottom...

[adam]

Haha
I'd rather stick a battery grip on for some weight (and functionality!)
haha
anyway, time to go to my lecture now!
see you later

[mic]

Canon are selling the 300D quicker than they can make them, so don't expect a price drop on that model soon. Maybe when sales flatten some retailers will reduce their margins, and when the model nears the end of its production run, Canon may drop the wholesale price and the 300D might hit $1200 or so.

Has anyone keep an eye on the price of the 5 Mega Canaon G5 P&S. It was an expensive unit before the 300D hit the shelf near the same price range. Now the G5 retails for under $900.00 AUD. About half price.

So don't despair, we could see a DSLR under $1000 AUD before too long. What will force the price down is more models competing with the 300D.

The other factor is build quality. Most manufacturers have worked out how to make a good digital camera, now they're trying to make them cheaper. Tear open an old digicam and count the boards inside. Some have 4 or 5 PBCs, now everything is on one main PCB board.

[adam]

If they remove the things which people don't use often, they can use less components and make it cheaper; like some playstations

[peter]

haha ..do thery remove things on playstations ?

[mic]

Worth a revisit to this thread.


A camera retailer in Aust has the Pentax ist D with lens for under $1.000

[Peted]

JB HiFi has the Ds with an 18-50mm Sigma lens under a grand AUD.

[shuttertalk]

I know! I saw the JB HIFI catalogue sitting on the table at the office, and nearly fell out of my chair! DSLR and lens for 999! Wow!

The 350D is still up around 1700 though...

[Peted]

I think that works out cheaper than the Yanks are buying them for. Mind you there is no SD card with that and if you could swap the 18-50 for the 18-200 or 18-125 that would really be amazing. I am thinking that locally the Pentax sales will jump because the box sellers are doing such great deals.

[mic]

Someone, perhap both the distributor and retailer, is taking a hammering on the margins.

[mic]

The same retailer who was selling the Petax for $1.000 last week has bumped it up to $1100 but now includes $100 worth of camera bag.


Clever. The bags would cost about 10 bucks, so they are getting a bit of a margin on the camera again..