£500/$1000

[andythebrave]

Gets me an entry level DSLR with a not so hot lens but buys me into a system which means that I can spend sacks of cash on one or two decent lenses and take my overall equipment spend up to in the region of £1000/$2000.

Gee, maybe I'm just being a little cynical here but I recall deep in the hazy past of my youth (late 70s onwards - some would say I'm still there...) when I started out I bought an Olympus OM-10, manual adaptor, 50/1.8 and a half decent Hoya 100-300/5.6 for £200/$400.

Later I changed that for an OM2SP, kept the 50/1.8 added a Tamron SP Macro 90/2.5 and Sigma APO 50-200 3.5/4.5 all for £450/$900 less £75/$150 trade in for the OM-10 and adaptor.

When that got stolen (and the OM2SP was no longer in production - rats!) the insurance money and some of my own hard earned got me a Canon T90, a new adaptall mount for the SP macro, a Vivitar S1 28-105, Vivitar 19, Sigma APO 70-300 and a Sigma APO 400 all for £1000/$2000.

Now, that's the same as the most basic DSLR plus a wide zoom and a tele zoom BUT they would not be of the same quality (or range) as my old 35mm equipment. To achieve that level of performance (even disallowing questions of ultimate image quality film v digital) would certainly involve expense of at least double the amount.

Now (finally) the question.

Why?

Why are DSLRs so expensive. It's not as if the technology is terribly new. All other electronic items start off high and go one way from there and that's down.

This isn't a rant, I really really want to know.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Sw1tchFX]

Because they can. Why does Canon charge $500 for a lens hood?

If you need it, you'll spend it.

 

[TheOtherBob]

Remember that there is no film cost with digital, so most of the costs are front-ended. With film, you had to buy film at, I don't know, a few bucks every 24-36 pictures - and about the same to develop it. For 10,000 pictures, you could easily end up spending...well, any math I do will be sadly wrong, but "a lot" is probably accurate enough. I think the two technologies cost something near the same if you count those back-end costs. Maybe not identical - I haven't worked out the math or anything - but I'd guess it would be close.

But, like I said, I haven't done the math, so I could be off by a factor of 1000 or something.

 

[Mike_E]

Oh, I donno, the Nikon N90s (the prosumer model) listed for over $1400 in 1994 and the D200 -prosumer- lists for around $1600 12 or so years later. that same $400 in late seventy's money would today get you a Pentax kit or a consumer Nikon or Canon kit.

The more things change the more they... well, you're likely tired of that.

mike