Well, that’s the end of that dream for me. I was really looking forward to owning one of these lovely little cameras, but Fujifilm has just gone and priced it right out of my range. Amazon has put up its pre-order pages for the camera and its lenses, and the earlier rumors were true: the camera sells for $1700 body-only, and the lenses aren’t cheap, either: $600 for the 18mm and 35mm, and $650 for the 60mm macro.
Damn it!
Well, at the very least, I’ll get to get my hands on one as soon as they send a few out to review. And the fact is that really, the X10 is probably good enough for someone like me. Someone as poor as me, I mean.
The question will really be whether this price represents a good value for the performance. No one doubts the X-Pro1 is a good camera, and that the lenses will be nice. But Fuji has been moving in a “luxury” direction, and like Apple, they may be able to add a bit of “tax” on there because they know they have a high-end brand. No one questions it when Leica does it, though they do question the quality when they put out something like the X1.
The competition at $1700 (with lens, $2300) is serious. That’s pro camera territory, beyond even Sony’s futuristic beast, the NEX-7. But Fuji believes their baby has the chops to compete, so we’ll just have to see.