British is best (?)

Are we still producing the products British consumers want to buy, or is cost everything and therefore the country can offer no real opposition to goods produced in the far east.

 What premium would you pay to buy British? Britain still produces some of finest designers and engineers in the world from some of finest colleges and universities in the world.

Lets take a camera for example, for many years the sole preserve of Japanese and German manufacturers, what would a British camera have to do, for you to invest. Would it need to be technically more advanced than anything on the market or would you sacrifise megapixels and custom modes for the quality of materials used in construction. I'm certain you wouldn't sacrifice overall picture quality derived from exposure accuracy and quality of lens.

So I present you with a 6 megapixel British designed and assembled camera which receives rave reviews for its build quality and image quality, but does not have a protrait mode, or landscape mode, or built in flash or an extensive range of accesories or liveview etc... Its just a simple camera with a decent exposure meter linked to manual shutter and aperture inputs which retails at around $600 more than existing 6mp offerings from Nikon,Canon et al.

Would you buy one?

they claim that right now the person that sells quality for reasonable price has no fear of the worsening economy..if it really is worsening and not an "play" just for the investment money it raped us all of down the line in taxes someday. Ok. Here's an few things they ought to be selling on the market...simple everyday things....pre-formed alumium cake pan molds for baking cakes for children's birthday parties. the latest one hard allmetal one was an Train" one for $20 and will probably last longer the the train fads...these sets need to come four in an package, for about $3.99. Foranothercouple of bucks, they could throw in two cake topper toys to match the cake theme...they shouldnot sell for much more then $2.00 more to sell well on themarket, as after that you start getting into ready made cupcakes. Most cakes sell over here around $8 to 15.00 depending on size. We have Mt. Hood out here and camping parks all around it...and not one "REI" or hiking store on it's slopes...at Government camp (village)right between all the middle of these campgrounds. Your closest store is about 20 miles away. Can you make an night infra red vision scope for less then $300? I'd perfer one around the $150 range... right now the leastthey have is in the $350 range. They offer hybrid seeds for gardening, how about seeds use to be considered "weeds" in the olden times, such as "fiidlehead" ferms..whose ferns in the springtime taste much like asparagus and goes where it won't most the time. They comeout with hybrid stuff..like cat-tailsbut not the old time harvestble in bunches of mature plant you use to see along streams and ponds. Longtime ago they had developedan 50 cent sized lily pond plant that bloomed in purple and like the "piggy back" plant..or "hens and her chicks" grew with plants that were off-shoots of the mother plant, I use to have one that I took off the top  of aquarium and grew it from it, with an grow light above it. with tiny submerisble lights along the bottomof the tank, you got the best of the whole thing, fish, blooming plants to boot. with an hard top built into an box it can make for really an nice patio/coffee table also. Maybe around $200 complete..and keep the pet industry in business feeding those fish. Few have come up with "minture" lily plants. How about an talking compass, just feed in your position and it tellsyou where your at, from where you were...for little kids. Just some ideas.

To answer Ian's question using his parameters, I'd say no, I wouldn't buy it; you've priced yourself out of the market sector with that big price difference at this level. Rollieflex had a similar idea in the early 60s after their 6x6 TLR's were well established in the market place, and moved to make a smaller 4 x 4 version taking 127 film, as did the Kodak Brownie which was vastly cheaper.  The engineering was excellent; as were its' Schneider lenses and Franke-Heidecke shutters. It lasted 2 years before it was withdrawn.

Also, for many years, British camera makers were the popular choice until the post-war years when European makers, notably German, started to move in on their markets, at a lower price. Then Nikon, an optical manufacture, decided to move in with a rangefinder camera to compete with Leica. Then Kwanon, later Canon, did the same using Nikon lenses before making their own. When import restrictions came off, the British manufacturers found this new competition from both Europe and Japan that was constantly increasing, and SLR's became more popular than rangefinders.

Nikon's lower price cameras are made in Thailand; their top range cameras are made in Sendai, Japan that soley makes their professional cameras.  I'm sure there's a logical reason they're doing this. My lower priced D70 and D200 are both made in Thailand, while my D1 and D3 are both made in Japan.

Your hypothetical question is to ask---let's make a D70; leave off the modes, and build it similarly to the professional cameras and market it as a mass market camera at it's now increased price. I think  you'll end up doing similar with a British made camera, and making it for a market that doesn't exist at that price level, as Rollieflex found out in 1963/64 and soon retreated from it. One of my photos on PoE was taken with one.

So, in a cut-throat market where two brand leaders have 80% of the D-slr market, and the rest share what's left, introducing a higher priced, better made camera at the lower end I think would be a non-starter, for the volume isn't going to be there. If you were a specialist camera maker at the higher end, with resultant much lower volumes, you'd probably stand a better chance.

I am very patriotic with a husband who is a skilled engineer which is a dying trade in this country. I think the question is a bit too hypothetical - I think most people who love photography will always go for quality of lens wherever it is made and I for one wouldn't buy a British camera just because it is British if it was more expensive and lower quality (if it was more expensive and higher quality then that would be a different matter to consider). We used to have the best engineers in the world but we have been outpriced by countries who use cheap labour. What will happen is that when the Eastern countries have killed engineering completely in the West they will have command of the market and then watch how the prices go up!!!

Cost will be everything for many for an bit, at least until this economic stuff shows if it's going to die down or not. there are many cameras out there available..now they are even on cell phones, unless you could combine an camera with something else attractive it could do, it might not be worth getting into it. So what else could cameras do, maybe have built-in GPS with them? Medic alert locator buttons? ...pictures taken and sent to an homePC right in the field, never have to buy film again.. maybe. Mini "metal dectors" as well as cameras for finding lost jewerly perhaps or rings or or other possible lost small field gear. Maybe become hand-warmers as you hold them? bottom of the case an flask for your favorite "nip" of something. Perpetual calendar for photography outtings.An person could go on forever if that's the case.

Actually I use to like the "Britianica" blue jeans, with the flag label and flared boot legs myself, we use to sell an lot of them. They were simple and neat looking with  an white cotton blouse.leather suede boots...you could dress them up or down and people could actually "afford" them also. But then we use to have the wildest socks back in those days for when you took the boots off also.