If you've been saving up for a new camera here in the UK, it's worth going back and checking the price you've got in your head, because it might not be the price any more. Three Fujifilm bodies cost noticeably more today than they did a couple of weeks ago, and nobody said a word about it.
What actually went up
I'd heard a rumour that price rises were coming in on the 1st September, so on the 31st August I wrote down the prices of 13 camera bodies across Wex and the manufacturers' own stores, then went back a few days later to see what had changed.
Comparing one shop against another never tells you anything useful, because there's always a promotion running somewhere, or a different margin sitting behind the counter. The only thing that means anything is the same camera at the same shop on two different days.
At Wex the changes were clear:
Fujifilm X100VI, £1,599 to £1,749
Fujifilm X-T50, £1,299 to £1,399
Fujifilm GFX 100 II, £6,999 to £7,499
That's £150 on the X100VI, which is a shade over 9%, £100 on the X-T50, and £500 on the GFX.
This isn't a case of a retailer quietly moving their margins about either, because Fujifilm's own UK web store shows exactly the same prices, and when a manufacturer changes the price on their own shop, that's the new baseline.
Two bodies that turned up on a leaked European retail list earlier in the summer, the X-S20 and the X-E4/X-E5 line, have stayed where they were for now.
Why it's happening
The interesting bit is that Fujifilm did explain all of this, just not to us. They explained it to their investors.
In their August quarterly financial presentation they set out a big jump in production costs tied directly to memory chips, which is the DRAM and flash memory that sits inside a digital camera. Demand from AI data centres has pushed the price of those components up, and cameras are competing for the same parts.
Fujifilm had originally forecast that memory costs would hit their imaging division by around 6 billion yen this year, but in that August report they more than doubled that to 14 billion yen, naming digital cameras and instant photo systems specifically. Their stated plan for handling it is "pricing measures and the procurement of alternative materials", which in plain English means passing some of the bill along to us.
Loud in Japan, silent over here
What makes it frustrating is that none of this is being said out loud in this country, because in Japan the manufacturers have been completely open about it all year.
Canon published formal notices about price adjustments across dozens of products back in May, Nikon issued official notices covering bodies like the Z50 II, and Sony posted updates for their cinema line in August. Over here we just woke up to bigger numbers on the product pages.
If you shoot Canon, Sony or Nikon and you reckon you're in the clear because UK prices haven't moved yet, I wouldn't get too comfortable. Shops tend to sell the stock they've already got at the price they paid for it, so once the warehouse clears and the next batch lands at the new wholesale cost, the shelf price usually follows.
OM System are doing the complete opposite at the minute, running their own discounts on their site through to late September on bodies like the OM-1 Mark II and the OM-5.
What I'd check before buying
However, there's a simple way to work out where you actually stand, and it takes a couple of minutes.
Start on the manufacturer's own store, because that gives you the true current RRP and it'll tell you straight away whether a quiet rise has already gone through. Then go and look at the independents you normally buy from, because if they're still sitting on earlier stock they may well still be selling at the old price, and that difference stays in your pocket. Depending on the body, that could be anywhere from £100 to £500.
None of this is a reason to rush out and buy something you weren't going to buy anyway, but if a camera has been on your list for a while, it's worth knowing that the number you wrote down a month ago might not be the number you pay. If you've spotted a quiet rise, or a sudden discount, on something you've been saving for, do say so in the comments; it all helps everyone work out where things are really heading.