1dmiii

Has anyone heard when the MIII will be available? I have been waiting for this camera for a year and a half. Now that its here, no one seems to know when it will be available or the price.

I've heard everything from next week to sometime in May. I guess it will come when it comes.

I'm more interested in whether it will come in at $4k or $4.5k.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

Ron Morse said:

Has anyone heard when the MIII will be available? I have been waiting for this camera for a year and a half. Now that its here, no one seems to know when it will be available or the price.

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FWIW, my dealer in the Netherlands says mid-May 2007, EUR 4149 incl. 19% VAT (3486,55 before tax).

Bart

Nill Toulme said:

I've heard everything from next week to sometime in May. I guess it will come when it comes.

I'm more interested in whether it will come in at $4k or $4.5k.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

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I really don't understand how anyone can announce a new camera and not know what the price will be yet.

Here's the scoop!

Canon USA getv thec cameras for very very very little and then decides on the price. There is a huge markup. It's not like lenses which require so many difficult stages. Here we have circuit and bodies of metal covered with plastic and all this is pretty standard mass produced and the highest profit margin.

So if Nikon came out with a $2700 super camera to really compete with the 1DIII Canon would simply cut the price, not take a single Advil headache tablet and still laugh all the way to the bank.

this state of affairs is great since it means that Canon will always be motivated to keep us fed with better cameras.

I just wish they would concentrate on dynamic range and have a pocket wizard built in1

Asher

Ron, take a look here, purely speculative mind.

Thanks John. I guess no one knows for sure.
Like Nill said it will come when it comes. It seems that is the only thing for sure.

What?

Asher Kelman said:

Here's the scoop!

Canon USA getv thec cameras for very very very little and then decides on the price. There is a huge markup.

So if Nikon came out with a $2700 super camera to really compete with the 1DIII Canon would simply cut the price, not take a single Advil headache tablet and still laugh all the way to the bank.

Asher

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Asher,

I think that if you are going to make a dpreview forum-like statement you ought to at least back it up with some facts and sources.

Asher Kelman said:

Canon USA getv thec cameras for very very very little and then decides on the price. There is a huge markup. It's not like lenses which require so many difficult stages. Here we have circuit and bodies of metal covered with plastic and all this is pretty standard mass produced and the highest profit margin.

Click to expand...

I don't think that 10fps shutter and mirror assembly is off the shelf. That's going to be very new and thus very expensive. Likewise, making new chips (both the optical ones and the DSP ones that make the camera work on the inside) is quite expensive. New circuitboards not so much so. New software to run everything (including all the testing) is quite expensive, too. Tooling up a new manufacturing line (new camera body, new batteries, basically entirely new assembly) is very expensive.

Even if it only costs $1000 to physically manufacture the camera, at most they'll sell a few 10's of thousands of these so they need to amortize the cost of development over all those cameras. They could easily drop a few million in R&D on a new camera like this.

These cameras are sophisticated devices. Canon is big and has lots of experience, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a very expensive undertaking.