It’s the holiday season and the push for you to buy things right now is intense. The slight improvement in overall outlook for the economy has provided a glimmer of hope, and retailers in general are doing pretty well so far this year. But there’s always give and take in the process—in this case the attempt to balance convincing you to buy now versus waiting for exciting new products right around the corner.
Here are some examples. In the last couple of days special deals have popped up for Canon’s 5D Mark II for $1,999. That’s an outstanding price for an unquestionably fine body even though it’s been on the market nearly three years. On the other hand, the new Canon 1D X flagship was announced a couple months ago and expectations continue to build for a 5D2 replacement in the not too distant future. And there’s much more to come early next month at (or just prior to) PMA in Las Vegas, like the Nikon press conference scheduled now for January 6th. Other companies are adding to the spin as well with Olympus touting a new “revolutionary” m4/3 camera soon (nice to see some hopeful news from Olympus for a change), and Pentax working on a mirrorless full frame body and maybe even a mirrorless medium format camera! Fuji is on the march too, promising a mockup of a large-sensor mirrorless camera with image quality surpassing full frame.
So if you’re a bargain hunter there are lots of very enticing offers at the moment. Otherwise, 2012 looks to be a very interesting year.