John & Maria's Photography Pages

Some thoughts on buying used or older new

Throughout my photographic journey I've always tended to buy used cameras and lenses.  Even where I have bought new I've never been an early adopter, preferring to wait until prices drop from the initial release price.  And drop they do, as inventory makes way for the next best thing, and old stock needs to be sold.  But the prices never drop as far as they do in the used market.

Take a simple case (figures via Camera Price Buster UK).  OM Systems (Olympus as was) have recently released a new flagship camera, the OM1 MkII, available here in the UK for just under £2200.  That instantly made the Original OM1 less valuable, with the price for this now instantly obsolete model dropping to about £1600 from an original £2000.  Even that doesn't compare with the prices on the used market, with like new bodies selling for under £1200, complete with a 6 month warranty.  

And that's when I'll buy one.  At half the original price.

I could repeat this exercise for most of my cameras and lenses, even the ones I've bought new.  A new Canon 300D - my first introduction to Digital SLR photography - for half the original £1000 price after one year on sale.  My initial foray into M43 with an EM-1 and 12-50mm lens for 40% of the original sales price,  The Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 and 1.4x teleconverter bought used for about £500 below the new price.  The list is long.

The truth is that most photographers don't need the latest and greatest.  Top end cameras 5 or 6 years old and used high quality lenses can still perform as well as they did when they were new unless they've been absolutely hammered.  All at a fraction of the price of the latest models.  Unlike the early days of Digital, improvements tend to be incremental rather than revolutionary.  I'll freely admit that I rarely push my now quite ancient used Em1 MkII to it's limits.  It's a better camera than I'm a photographer and more than good enough for the majority of my stock work.  

Even my EM5 MkII (bought used, of course) still functions as well as it did when I bought it and still functions as my backup body.  But it's far more restricted and I can just about justify the need for a newer body.  And with the likely flood of OM1s coming onto the used market as they're traded in for the new model I can see the price of an excellent or even like new body getting below the £1000 mark in the next 6 months.

And that's when I'll buy one.  At half the original price.