E510 & kit lens for £299 at Jessops

[Phill D]

For the UK this seems like quite a bargain to me unfortunately they have all gone in my area. There are a few left though as there seem to be some left around Bristol.

[Rhys]

I knew and said 5 years ago that dSLRs would be coming in at about the same price as a normal SLR.

[Phill D]

Weel looks like they've all gone now Jessops have removed it from the website. Hope anyone that wanted one got one. Eventually Rhys you were bound to be correct as digital completely takes over. I guess we've pretty much got to that point now.

[Rhys]

Once the R&D has all been paid for, there's no reason why dSLRs should not be cheaper even than film SLRs as the thing that really costs with most things is the moving parts. With no film transport mechanism, one large section of moving parts is eliminated.

Now that we have 6, 8, 10 and 12 megapixels for dSLRs I cannot really imagine anybody really needing more. Heck, I use 8 megapixels and have no lack. I can print to 20x30 with careful framing. Most people only want/need 10x8s, which is achievable with careful framing from a 3mp camera.

Canon's 21mp 1Dmk3 is very interesting - that's blurring the boundary between 35mm and medium format. In fact I'd say it's probably Canon attacking the medium format market.

[Phill D]

Yes I guess once the R&D costs are out of the way then prices should bottom out. It seems to me that the price curve is pretty generic though and most cameras follow a reducing price from their outset & bottom out at about ~50% of their introduction price with sell off discounts when the new model comes out in about 12 - 18 months. The new model to new model price fall I guess is a bit more gradual. Might be interesting to do a bit of market research here to check these thoughts out though. I did recently find when buying a new TV that in the shop there were old models even when well discounted that were slightly more expensive than the new models that had just come out. When I queried this the assistant told me that they could not sell the particular old model any cheaper due to its higher starting price and if it didn't sell it would be returned to the manufacturer. Not sure how that works. Anyway needless to say I bought the new model & got a very good deal although it did drop another £50 three months later - it hasn't dropped any more though since so I guess I got it close to the bottom of the curve. It was a good enough deal for me though & I got an excellent TV. Back to cameras, intelligent timing of a purchase can save a lot of cash - probably for lenses later ;)

[JTL]

Canon's 21mp 1Dmk3 is very interesting - that's blurring the boundary between 35mm and medium format. In fact I'd say it's probably Canon attacking the medium format market.In fact, I'd say Canon has a very long way to go before it is "attacking" the digital medium format market...

http://JTL.smugmug.com/photos/308211872_6DcrD-XL.jpg