Nikon D700 Prices !

What the hell!

A Nikon D700
 (the full frame camera in the body like the D300) is now fetching prices of £1900!!! (new)
Lets see what amazon gives us here

ooh ouch saying £1850 just now.

This is over 200-300 pounds more than what it was when it first came out!!!

People are now selling their Nikon D700
s for the same price as they bought them 3 years ago!  how mental is that!

What the reason

2 things

The exchange rate with japan sucks

and

the earthquake crisis in japan has screwed up the supply, now very few shops are getting any D700 bodies and as demand is still around the same they are now putting up the prices.

So makes you have to think.

If you buy a quality dslr (not an amateur or even prosumer)  you could have potentially used it for 3 years and sell it for say £100 less than what you bought it for.   Kinda makes the idea of renting equipment a bit of a waste of time.

I have a wedding coming up this friday and I was going to be renting the Nikon D700
 for the day, but for me to pick it up on the Friday morning, I would have to return it at 5pm that day otherwise I would have it for the weekend as the shop would be closed and I would in turn get charged for 2 days.  

1 day rental is around £90 from Calumet (along with having to stump up the £1900 deposit)  and for two days it was going to be around £170, (tiny discount).  Now if you are shooting a wedding for a mate and you have given mates rates of £500 (not including album design or supply) then that is a big whack out of any profit you may have been made. In the end after travel, taxes, parking, food, and insurance, you are looking at a Mates rate wedding getting you only about £200, for 10 hours shooting(and travel) and 20 hours editing (and delivery).  Thats back go minimum wage.

Now you know why photographers cost £1000+ per shoot. And remember the photos are the one thing you can really keep from your wedding, flowers, dresses, cakes, lighting, bands, hotels, honeymoon etc all disappear and photos are the keepers.

So the question is what do you do

do you buy a second hand D700 which is almost the same price as what it was when it first came out

or do you buy a new nikon D700 which will cost you around 300more than what it was when it first came out and then try and sell it once the upgrade nikon D800 comes out later this year (December 2011 abouts) 

Me?

Well I have opted for buying a second hand Nikon D700
. I have managed to get one for £1500 and then postage from a camera company in London. Chesick camera company  http://chiswickcameras.co.uk/

and Fingers crossed it gets here on Tuesday so I have a chance to test it out before the wedding on Friday.

I have no idea how many "actuations" it has, but I really don't care. My Nikon D300 has shot over 80,000 shots and is going strong. That roughly works out to  100 photos every single day I have owned it.   Which of course I have not done that but some days I have shot 1000, and a wedding could easily be 2000 photos in a single day (depending on number of guests and size of event) 

At the wedding I will still be taking my older camera as back up  the Fuji s5pro, as although the ISO is shockingly low compared to the Nikon D700  its dynamic range is still amazing and trumps all but the NIkon D3x

So my advice,  if you see an amazing camera for a good price buy it, as it may in the end cost you almost nothing for using it a number of years!  save the money, Dont rent unless you have to.










Link to Getting There with Photography: By Dom Bower

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By Dom Bower

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