Olympus up to something......

Prices have just dropped like a stone on Olympus stuff at the largest
Canadian retailer. In some cases, 25%, almost 40% since the
introduction of the new E-series cameras. In addition, Olympus Canada
is offering these rebates:
http://olympuscanada.com/cpg_section/cpg_rebates.asp

Someone on dpreview suggested something could be about to happen with
them. However, the just released E-3 is not price-volatile yet.

 

Are you complaining that Henry's prices for Olympus kit is now
comparable to B&H? Rander, for the past month you've been bitching
about price-rape in Canada.

Y'know, for someone who never misses an opportunity to slam DPReview
you sure are quick to use it as a source.


TR

 

Of course the rapid appreciation of the Canadian dollar couldn't
possibly have anything to do with that. Oh no.

 

It's not the Canadian dollar which is rising, it's the US dollar which
is falling, more seriously than for many decades.

 

I regularly do business in Canada. The Canadian dollar has risen
against world currencies, not just against the falling dollar.

 

No, but substantial price drops usually indicate something about to
happen. Nikon pricing still stinks in Canada, no drops there.

I slam them for Phil's toadying to Canon, which has little to do with
a private poster's observations.

 

Then how come the D80 still costs as much as it did 3 months ago?

 

In Australia, the E410 has dropped from $1299 at release, to
about $800 after rebates - a drop of $500 or almost 40%.

The reason is simple - no-one wants them. Was recently
talking to one of my local stores, which is one of the
largest stores within one of the largest photo groups in
Australia - they sell bucketloads of Canon & Nikon, and
moderate numbers of Pentax and Sony. Since release of the
E410, they've sold about half a dozen - this would be a
typical morning's sales of 400Ds or D40x's.

 

I bought a few E300s for $580 each (with lenses) to use as "santa's
little helper" cameras a couple of years ago. Fantastic cameras. but they
couldn't give them away. I eventually sold them on Ebay and replaced them
with FZ50 Panasonic. The flash still says Olympus but works OK on the FZ!

Douglas.

 

I had an E300 for a while on a kind of never-never loan, but
never really liked it - which was a shame because I
absolutely adored the E1 that preceded it. While I had the
E300, I pretty much went back to film, because I just wasn't
happy with what was coming out of it.
I had 4 main gripes with the E300 - colour, dynamic range,
noise and clarity. The colour always seemed off, even after
manual WB - in fact the colour shift seemed to change with
the exposure, so brighter areas tinged toward magenta, while
darker areas tinged toward green. Seemed no amount of
fiddling could get colours that seemed accurate.
The dynamic range was very limiting - less than slide film.
I had some side-by-side shots with the E300 and Velvia, and
the velvia did better in both the highlights and the
shadows, and we all know how bad velvia's reputation is.
The noise was pretty disgusting at 400 and above - too many
pixels crammed into too small space.
Finally I think the lens I had may have been a bit iffy, but
the shots it took never seemed quite sharp - this came as a
shock after the E1 with the 14-54. It also had an odd sort
of diffraction? effect outside the centre third. Hard to
describe, but it was sort of similar to the effect that you
get with those diffraction magnifiers. It could have just
been the lens, but since it was a loaner, I wasn't about to
start spending up on glass for it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the FZ50 only have a
single connection hotshoe? (or am I thinking of the Fuji
S9500)? - so in theory it should work with any flash, but
only in manual mode.