Lens prices in the UK

[donoreo]

You get shafted over there, do you not? I am in Canada and we pay higher than US prices (even when our dollar is at or near par with theirs) but you guys take it hard! I have always noticed prices being pretty much the same in sterling as what they are here in dollars. An example is the Canon 50 mm 1.8, here it is anywhere from $110 to $140 and over there it is about £100.

Why are the prices so high, other than they can get away with it? You are a larger market than we are (UK - 62M, Can - 33M) but we may benefit from being close to the US.

Live rates at 2010.05.27 14:50:07 UTC
1.00 GBP = 1.52573 CAD
1.00 CAD = 0.655426 GBP

[jack the ripper]

Its not just lens prices, its about everything from the usa that comes over here to the uk. I'm well into my pa equipment and my JBL SRX728 subs cost me £1,300 whereas in the usa they're about $1,500 which is £1,000. Most places here in the uk sell them for £1,700 each which is the equivilent to $2,470 each. I think its something to do with customs and exise tax which is import duty. The british government have made damn sure that its no cheaper at all to buy stuff from the usa and have it shipped to the uk. I wanted to buy a pair of used JBL speakers from the usa and due to the weight and cost, shipping and customs and exise duty meant it'd cost me a further £600 to get them here which meant it absoluteky wasn't worth it at all, because I could get a pair used here in the uk for the total cost it was gonna cost me to buy them and sip them to me. Then the customs wanted a further £125 to deliver them to my door and I only live half of a mile away from the docks.

[AndrewKulin]

Donoreo:

As I understand it, UK prices must be shown with their VAT tax included in the price (17.5%). Here in Canada, and in US prices are shown w/o taxes so we need to add those in to compare (13% taxes in Ontario).

So the £100 lens you looked up would convert to approx. $130 CDN after removing the VAT and doing the conversion. A local camera outfit in Toronto has that lens going for $132 CDN. I looked up pricing on a 7D body, and same store in Toronto has it listed $1600 CDN. A store in UK has it listed at £1,226 - doing same math it comes out to about $1592 CDN.

Interestingly, a certain store in NY, NY has a 7D body going for $1600 US (or $1,666 CDN).

So it seems that we are paying about the same price whichever side of pond we call home (at least for the 7D) and that we are actually paying less than the folks in the States.

[jack the ripper]

The cheapest price I could find for the Canon Eos 7D is £1,500 which works out to $2,283 canadian dollars, and thats the body only, no lens. I always use the XE currency converter site to do conversions bbecause its the best and always most up to date keeping updated daily with the exchange rates. By the way, £1,226 is $1,866 canadian, not $1,592 canadian.

[AndrewKulin]

My converted values were shown without the VAT since in N.America, prices are shown w/o taxes (makes stuff look less expensive).

Going the other way, that $1,600 CDN 7D would cost us (with 13% tax in Ontario) $1,808 CDN, or converted to pounds, £1,185. A bit less expensive here, but really only because of the 4.5% tax differential.

I got the 7D pricing off the Park Camera web-site.

Cheers

[KeithT]

Prices in the UK haven't really changed that much over the years when comparing them with wages and the general cost of living. Looking through a 1971-72 copy of the Wallace Heaton Photographic Blue Book is quite revealing. For instance, the book shows an Olympus 35SP as £61.50. That was around 2.5 weeks wages for most of us at that time, and for those of us who were married with children, well we had to put in some serious overtime to afford one. Other brands like the Minolta HI-MATIC at £93-96 and the Yashica LYNX 5000E at £81. 09. were certainly out of my league at that time.

By comparison, with wages far above the expectations of the 1970's amateur photographer, gear is far more accessible and affordable than it was back then. In fact, I would go as far as to say a lot of cameras are not only superior build and techno-wise, but are cheaper, if not equall to prices of yesteryear.

Some more prices from the 70's:

Exposure meters
Sixtino - £9.34

Gossen Luna Six 3 - £41-58

Weston Master V - £13-98

Cameras:

Canon FTb - £188.95 with f/1.4 50mm lens

Canon Canodate E £79-91

Rolleiflex SL26 - £ 176 .54 Body only - Lenses: 80mm Pro-Tessar f/4 ££81.45 - 28mm Pro-Tessar f/3.2 £66.59

[jack the ripper]

Are you having a laugh? Prices has risen wages have got a little better but not much. Maybe round your way wages are up by a lot but here in my town, most people are unemplyed because of the foreign people flooding the town and taking over all the jobs, then movinh up the chain and finally taking over ALL the food processing factories and landwork and sacking all english people. Look at a snicker bar, 58p now, in the 1980's it used to be 23p when it was called the marathon bar. Prices have risne so much that most people these days are in debt, more people than ever before are losing their homes to debt and more people are being made homeless. The cost of living is horrendous these days for people who dont have high paying secure jobs.

[xavier]

Hi jack the ripper your quit right about the cost of living its a disgrace & and outrage the price of things today. I also think one is lucky to have a job and even more lucky if one has a secure job, but that is another days discusion.

I also agree with the point that the cost of some if not all lenses are frightful

[OldBoy]

The biggest problems with Lens prices is the exchange rate between the Yen and Pound. This was shown by the price increase for the Sigma 50-500mm F4-6.3 which was £750 but is now £1,077.

[KeithT]

Originally Posted by jack the ripper

Are you having a laugh? Prices has risen wages have got a little better but not much. Maybe round your way wages are up by a lot but here in my town, most people are unemplyed because of the foreign people flooding the town and taking over all the jobs, then movinh up the chain and finally taking over ALL the food processing factories and landwork and sacking all english people. Look at a snicker bar, 58p now, in the 1980's it used to be 23p when it was called the marathon bar. Prices have risne so much that most people these days are in debt, more people than ever before are losing their homes to debt and more people are being made homeless. The cost of living is horrendous these days for people who dont have high paying secure jobs.

Definitely not having a laugh. I was earning 28 quid a week in 1970 and that was as a film technician at Elstree Studios, and married with 1 child and a mortgage which was keeping me very poor I can tell you. A lot of people were on much less and I had the benefit of some decent regular overtime. Today's married unemployed get around 4 times that amount in benefits without their rent allowance on top.

Of course prices have gone up, but don't tell me that wages haven't kept up with that. For example an £800 lens is about twice a workers average weekly wage by today's standards. In 1970 a decent £80 lens equivalent cost nearly 4 times my weekly wage.

Debt isn't a new thing either. Most generations have had to suppliment their income with debt. In the 1960s,1970s, debt was via the old "Live now - Pay later" Hire Purchase agreements. If you missed a payment they would snatch back the lot even after the 30% charges they made and even if you had only one or two payments left to make.

I'm not saying prices aren't a rip-off, Im saying not much has changed in my lifetime. Nothing is cheap and there are no free rides anywhere you live.