Speaking to UK retailers recently I was shocked to find out the extent of the price hike we are suffering in the UK. Since the economic downturn the UK has seen 10-15% price increases on most professional video equipment and accessories.

Take Sony for instance…the semi pro HDR FX1000 was £2800 just over 8 months ago now you are looking at £3900 for the same camcorder !

That’s £1100 added to the same camcorder in 8 months !!!

My friend Bill told me “A customer bought this camcorder 8 months ago at £2800 and last month asked me if he could buy a second FX1000 to be told it was now £3900 and was duly told no thank you”

A second example is the Canon XL H1S a year ago you could buy this camcorder for £4500 and today after 3 price rises it is £6500 a price increase of £2000 !!!

The best of all were Panasonic P2 cards before May 2009 a 64Gb P2 card was £1708 then after a lot of soul searching and the small problem that P2 camcorders were not selling… Panasonic brought out the P2 “E” 64Gb card at a more sensible price of £736.

Strangely this is not consistent with the whole camcorder market, domestic camcorders on the whole have dropped in price.

There is no satisfactory conclusion to this story other than the fact we in the UK have taken the brunt when it comes to price hikes and retailers are now stuck with camcorders they can’t shift.