Canon ramps up local pricing for Canon R5, R6, etc

While Canon Australia, for reasons it has never explained, does not provide local pricing to the media, retailers have already begun to advertise for pre-orders and provide local street prices for the barrowload of Canon new releases from last week, including the full-frame mirrorless R5 and R6, along with four new lenses, two lens extenders and a premium A3+ inkjet printer.

Unfortunately, the pricing seems to indicate that the dreaded ‘Australia tax’ is back at Canon. When we covered the new releases all we had to go on was US pricing because, as stated, local pricing is withheld. So to provide a rough estimate of likely local prices we simply converted the US price to Australian dollars, added 10 percent for the GST and then rounded the figure up to the nearest hundred dollars. We regularly do this little bit of arithmetic rather than provide US pricing only, or simply pretend price isn’t a critical factor in the ‘value equation’ for photographic gear.

In our recent experience, local pricing might turn out to be anything up to five percent higher than the straight conversion would indicate, but not loaded up enough to cause local retailers competing against grey marketers too much concern.

Yet when we saw published street prices over the weekend, an average of around 10 percent (in addition to GST) had been added to what Australians will pay to buy local compared to US pricing.

In fact, official Canon RRPs are even higher! The prices published on the Canon online store have been bumped up another 10 percent or so on advertised street pricing.

We apologise for misleading readers but were taken by surprise that local RRPs would be so much higher. We have amended the earlier story with the actual local street pricing.

Here are the actual local prices, as published by Digital Camera Warehouse, with Canon Online Store RRPs as well:

Canon R5 mirrorless: $6799, body only. Canon RRP $7099 (US$3899 – we said $6200)

Canon R6 mirrorless: $4499 body only. Canon RRP $4749 (US$2499, we said $4000); $4899 with 24-105mm f4-7.1 IS STM lens. Canon RRP $5259

Canon BG-R10 battery grip: $599

Canon RF 600mm f11 IS STM: $1399. Canon RRP $1599 (US$699, we said $1100)

Canon RF 800mm f11 IS STM: $1799. Canon RRP $2030 (US$899, we said $1450)

Canon RF 85mm f2 Macro IS STM: $1199. Canon RRP $1290 (US$599, we said $1000)

Canon RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1 L IS USM: $4799. Canon RRP $5699 (US$2699, we said $4300)

Canon RF 1.4x extender: $1099 (US$499)

Canon RF 2x extender: $1249 (US$599)

Canon Imageprograf Pro-300 A3+ printer: $1049 (we said $1500 – this is a rare bargain, locally-speaking).