It seems that we don’t have to wait till the 17th of March to find out the price of the new GH4 body only… at £1299 this is £200 better than I was expecting but what about the SDI adapter.
I have been told the SDI adapter with GH4 will come in at £2500 making the adapter £1201 which is £500 more than expected.
Not completely applicable to the UK, but as a guide, here are the prices from Texas Media Systems in the US:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?319443-Panasonic-GH4-4K-Camera-Announced-Texas-Media-Systems
Wow… B&H just today announced body @ 1020 pounds and the adapter unit at 1200 pounds.
The offer both together for 1981 pounds (no lens).
Quite different pricing!
Note: in America, B&H shows the GH-4 for US$1698, the adapter for US$1999 or both for US$3298.
£706 for the XLR/SDI adapter seems to be very unrealistic. In the US it’s 1998 Dollar, in Germany 1999 Euro.
Of course you can buy everything separately, it’s only cheaper when bought as a kit. The GH4 body plus adapter for example is 3299 Dollar, so you save 400 Dollar.
Hold on! B&H will of course have a lower price than the UK/EU – we have to pay import duties and then 20% VAT on top of that.
Pocket Lint and a few other sites are settling down on £2500 for the GH4 body plus a Yagi, and there’s a separate side offer for early puchasors of the Body and Lens – they get a battery and battery grip. Sounds like that’s where it went a bit fuzzy over the pricing.
Indeed Matt, and don’t forget the high cost of insured delivery from the USA (~£35-50?) and the ‘admin. fee’ (~£10-15?) the courier company will require before releasing the shipment (for taking the Import Duty + VAT off you …yes, you pay Import Duty on the item value then VAT on the total item plus Duty value …a tax on a tax!).
I imported a secondhand Nikon lens from Florida a few years back and with delivery (+ fee), Import Duty and VAT (yes, both on a 25 year old lens!) I’d budget an extra 25% plus delivery costs on any future import.
At that rate a USA GH4 body at $1698 or approx. £1020 will end up costing somewhere around £1275 plus delivery/fee when self imported …almost certainly more than the UK price.
Then what happens if you have a problem with the camera? …I doubt Panasonic UK/Europe will be interested in providing warranty support for your new USA market camera?
As I pointed out in a previous post, when the GH3 was launched Panasonic UK chose to overprice it (relative to other markets) at ~£1250+ for the body as compared, for example, to the USA price of ~$1300 (~£800 at the time) which, even with the addition of UK Import Duty & VAT, equated to around £1000! It was also available in Europe (for those requiring the PAL version) for considerably less than the UK price (with no extra Import Duty/VAT to pay!).
On this occasion (for a pleasant change!) it seems there is little or no effective price differential between UK, European and USA markets at the product launch.
As a GH3 user, I was afraid that the GH4 might be overpriced at launch, but looking at the raft of improvements over the (already good!) GH3 (and having had a brief ‘hands-on’ at BVE) I’m beginning to think it’s looking like something of a bargain!