Nauticam's Recent Price Hikes...

Sagadive.com has a Nauticam WACP-1 to Aquatica adapter which I would guess is N120.

Also Marelux has a Nauticam N120 to Marelux adapter20 that allows all N120 ports and extensions along with WACP-1/2 adaptation.

The attached photo is the Marelux MX-A7IV housing with the adapter mounted to the housing and a Nauticam N120 30mm extension with Nauticam 140mm dome port mounted to the adapter. The shade is removed for use with the Canon 8-15mm fisheye at the 8mm end.

It seems that the price increase was caused by the increase in raw materials and the cost of transport worldwide. But I agree that the price rise is very high.

For non-professional amateurs of underwater photography, there are still brands with contained prices such as Isotta or AOI.

I think that price rises are inevitable after the last couple of years of upheaval in so many areas of business. I’d be amazed if others aren’t adjusting similarly over the coming months. I would be pretty sure that Nauticam aren’t doing this to fill their pockets, but just to keep their business going in these tough times. I’d also expect to see similar increases across our world - travel, resorts, diving equipment etc - after the last couple of years.

Regarding the ports, lenses, accessories etc - it is almost always very easy to adapt these between brands. Although some dealers might overplay how complicated this is - to keep you in their brands. This is generally true whichever way you want to move. 

Here are some photos of various Nauti-stuff working seamlessly on my housings. WACP-1, Nauticam 45 viewfinder and Nauticam vacuum system on my D5 housing. Yes - it really was 15.5kg on my last trip! D5 is going back to Wetpixel live webcam duties after that! 

Wet lenses like SMC and CMC are easy to use.

WACP without the propriety buoyancy collar - using foam instead on D850.

EMWL-1 on D850 with Saga 105mm port,

2 hours ago, Alex_Mustard said:

I think that price rises are inevitable after the last couple of years of upheaval in so many areas of business. I’d be amazed if others aren’t adjusting similarly over the coming months.

Other manufacturers published prices for their upcoming housings already. No one had a steep increase like Nauticam. We will see.

Regarding port and lens adapters I see several different solutions in you photos. Except smc and cmc, are DIY or custom adapters?

3 hours ago, Alex_Mustard said:

Yes - it really was 15.5kg on my last trip! D5 is going back to Wetpixel live webcam duties after that! 

15,5Kg???? OMG!! Every day I like more my OMD EM5-III camera setup.

By the way....Nauticam for OMD EM5-III purchased in:

- Nov 2021> €1.550 VAT Incl.
- May 2022> €2.077 VAT Incl.

Difference: €527 VAT Incl.

If I'm not mistaken.... this is a 34% rise.

32 minutes ago, Davide DB said:

Regarding port and lens adapters I see several different solutions in you photos. Except smc and cmc, are DIY or custom adapters?

Sagadive.com is always my first port of call for adaptors. 

4 hours ago, Davide DB said:

Other manufacturers published prices for their upcoming housings already. No one had a steep increase like Nauticam. We will see.

Regarding port and lens adapters I see several different solutions in you photos. Except smc and cmc, are DIY or custom adapters?

Close-up lenses simply screw into the 67mm threads of the Saga conical ports. I have the aluminum version for the 105 AFS Nikkor that I have used with with the SMC-1, Inon-167, and EMWL focusing unit 1. Nauticam sells a 67mm ring to replace the bayonet mount on the focusing unit which I did.

There have been price increases in many things here in Alaska since the pandemic began, some more than one-third up in cost. These cost increases likely vary by location. We do not know what costs Nauticam has had to deal with in order to keep on producing gear. More increases around the world are likely now due to the Ukraine war especially fuel and food. There is already a shortage of wheat.

Certainly no manufacturer is immune from the increased costs related to the supply chain problems, fewer workers, and higher production costs due to inflation. It's also worth noting that the new Subal Alpha 1 housing is about $2k more than the Nauticam.

I've always had Nauticam housings, mostly because they were early to market with M4/3 housings. And without exception, they've all been excellent. High quality, well-engineered, and many little features that tell you whoever designed the housing was really thinking things through. And also, they're very ergonomic with comfortable and sensible control layouts. The one downside, and this is related to that ergonomic design, is that they're full of complex little clockworks inside. On a live aboard, I don't think you'd have a chance in hell of servicing one. A friend of mine has an old Subal 5DSR housing, and a pusher failed. He had the parts on hand, and with simple tools, he fixed it right there on the camera table. I believe he said that there's alot of parts commonality across housing models, and within each housing itself, which means you don't have to carry a very big spares kit to solve quite a few common problems.

It seems to me that there are many inexpensive Nauticam housings available - second hand. This obsession with upgrading to the latest and greatest made some sense when there was a market for stock pictures, or magazines paid better. But now. most pictures end up on Instagram it seems, shot at many times the quality of what is required. I think you'd be hard pressed to beat a Nikon D500 with a Tokina 10-17 and Topaz if you need a bigger file for a print. And the quest for mirrorless? I don't really understand it, even though I did it myself.

And with a little ingenuity, you can save money of a new Nauticam by improvising a few of the accessories. I'm on my third, (a Z50 housing) perhaps my last. But that's what I thought with the Nikon D800 housing seven years ago...

19 hours ago, PeteAtkinson said:

It seems to me that there are many inexpensive Nauticam housings available - second hand. This obsession with upgrading to the latest and greatest made some sense when there was a market for stock pictures, or magazines paid better. But now. most pictures end up on Instagram it seems, shot at many times the quality of what is required. I think you'd be hard pressed to beat a Nikon D500 with a Tokina 10-17 and Topaz if you need a bigger file for a print. And the quest for mirrorless? I don't really understand it, even though I did it myself.

And with a little ingenuity, you can save money of a new Nauticam by improvising a few of the accessories. I'm on my third, (a Z50 housing) perhaps my last. But that's what I thought with the Nikon D800 housing seven years ago...

The value proposition for upgrading to a latest-generation camera is (slightly) more compelling if shooting video. Not because most of us are making any money out of the hobby, but simply because the codecs, autofocus and image quality for video is still evolving.

If I was shooting stills only, I'd be quite happy with a Nikon D500 or D800/D810 body. Which is what I bought when I first got into underwater photography 10 years ago

But then, I do recall paying ~$3500k for that Nauticam Nikon D800 housing. And staring down the $7200 price tag on an Canon R5 C housing definitely feels like a whole different matter.

On 5/4/2022 at 4:01 PM, turandot said:

15,5Kg???? OMG!! Every day I like more my OMD EM5-III camera setup.

By the way....Nauticam for OMD EM5-III purchased in:

- Nov 2021> €1.550 VAT Incl.
- May 2022> €2.077 VAT Incl.

Difference: €527 VAT Incl.

If I'm not mistaken.... this is a 34% rise.

I take your EM5-III and I raise you GH5.... I know Corona this and Corona that, but I am really struggling to find reasons for a 60% price increase (and more like 70% once we factor in VAT). Well, unless that new HDMI bulkhead was first made out of silver and now gold perhaps.

31 minutes ago, makar0n said:

I take your EM5-III and I raise you GH5.... I know Corona this and Corona that, but I am really struggling to find reasons for a 60% price increase (and more like 70% once we factor in VAT). Well, unless that new HDMI bulkhead was first made out of silver and now platinum perhaps.

 

Indecent price increase

I guess time will tell if this across-the-board 60% price increase will lead to Nauticam loosing market share to newcomers like Marelux (which, as far as I can tell, make housing on par with Nauticam?) and older competitors like Aquatica (which offer a compelling price proposition with vaccuum valves & flash triggers being included in the housing price). 

We can partly "blame" ourselves for such a disproportionate price increase due to the fact that we are buying Nauticam and many other products from dealers aka middle men who are buying the products from distributors aka more middle men. Currently there is no option for buying Nauticam directly which is the "real problem" of the system and takes the second part of the before mentioned "blame".

So how does a 10-15% increase in material cost/inflation lead to 30% increase in product price? Firstly this is a small industry which inevitably exaggerates any fluctuations in pricing. Secondly the manufacturers are not dependent only on the material costs, their workforce/developers/managers need to get paid just as well and with inflation they will demand a higher paycheck. That's all fine and dandy, nobody can really take it against them. The "real problem" is that the distributors and dealers, the middle man, will also demand a higher profit to cover their own costs and this is where you can really see the prices skyrocketing.

Example: A distributor was buying a product at 100 and selling it at 150, the dealer was then buying this product for 150 and selling it at 225, a standard 50% margin across the board. 225 was the price you paid as the consumer. Then the manufacturer needed to increase the price by 15%. This meant the distributor was now buying at 115 and he also needed to increase the margin by 15% because inflation and is now selling to his dealers for 181. Same goes for the dealers which are now selling the product to your for 285. Voila, the production costs increased by 15 but the final price increased by 60 or by about 25% in total.

In some industries we can already see a shift toward direct sales which should lead to more stable prices. Maybe we will see this shift in the uw photo industry...

58 minutes ago, Jerry Diver said:

We can partly "blame" ourselves for such a disproportionate price increase due to the fact that we are buying Nauticam and many other products from dealers aka middle men who are buying the products from distributors aka more middle men. Currently there is no option for buying Nauticam directly which is the "real problem" of the system and takes the second part of the before mentioned "blame".

So how does a 10-15% increase in material cost/inflation lead to 30% increase in product price? Firstly this is a small industry which inevitably exaggerates any fluctuations in pricing. Secondly the manufacturers are not dependent only on the material costs, their workforce/developers/managers need to get paid just as well and with inflation they will demand a higher paycheck. That's all fine and dandy, nobody can really take it against them. The "real problem" is that the distributors and dealers, the middle man, will also demand a higher profit to cover their own costs and this is where you can really see the prices skyrocketing.

Example: A distributor was buying a product at 100 and selling it at 150, the dealer was then buying this product for 150 and selling it at 225, a standard 50% margin across the board. 225 was the price you paid as the consumer. Then the manufacturer needed to increase the price by 15%. This meant the distributor was now buying at 115 and he also needed to increase the margin by 15% because inflation and is now selling to his dealers for 181. Same goes for the dealers which are now selling the product to your for 285. Voila, the production costs increased by 15 but the final price increased by 60 or by about 25% in total.

In some industries we can already see a shift toward direct sales which should lead to more stable prices. Maybe we will see this shift in the uw photo industry...

Nauticam has had a direct shop for years. You can pretty much order anything there short of some older stuff.

And there is not that many "middle-men" in the UW camera business i think, most shops gets things from Nauticam (or other manufacturers) directly, without any extra "layers". As for price increase, give me the first one (ie. 20%), and i will say fine, after 4 years etc sure, as much as i hate it, it is rather expected. But triple that less that year later ?

Also, while Nauticam housings were of a let's call it "good" price to quality ratio, their accessories were and are horribly expensive, with the price of zoom rings (average 300 USD going up to even 600) being basically a meme of UW industry for me. So you had "ok" priced housing with incredibly expensive accessories. Now you have both. And incredibly expensive servicing - 450 Euro M4/3 , 650 Euro DSLR (and that was before the recent price hike!)

In the other thread Subal/Seacam was also compared as costing about the same, sure but Subal zoom rings run about 170 USD on average and not 300, so maybe you pay for housing but ecosystem is cheaper. And from what i understand from the posts, you can basically service housing yourself, something that's pretty much impossible with Nauticam.

Nauticam shop sends your order to a dealer (tried and checked), it is explained here: https://www.nauticam.com/pages/terms-conditions

"Even with direct purchases we are working with our worldwide dealer and distributor network to provide you with the fastest fulfillment experience possible."

You are not buying directly from the manufacturer which means you will pay the margins of the distributor and dealer.

12 minutes ago, Jerry Diver said:

Nauticam shop sends your order to a dealer (tried and checked), it is explained here: https://www.nauticam.com/pages/terms-conditions

"Even with direct purchases we are working with our worldwide dealer and distributor network to provide you with the fastest fulfillment experience possible."

You are not buying directly from the manufacturer which means you will pay the margins of the distributor and dealer.

Well then you have one layer, which is rather expected. And I do not see that layer justifying a huge price jump less than a year after a 20% increase. Certainly you see nothing like it from any other manufacturer.
It almost seems like a "market positioning" exercise - using price to market themselves as the luxurious brand or something, since like with everything else, people often assume that whatever is most expensive must be the best.

Also those words can mean they might ship via local dealer if exists/is faster, but does not necessarily mean they won't ship themselves directly.

It's mostly 2 layers because the distributor doesn't sell to customers and the manufacturer doesn't sell to dealers. Maybe if the country is small they might only have a dealer but usually the distributors negotiate to cover a larger area and any outliers.

As a consumer you won't get a direct shipment from Nauticam, they are based in China.

21 minutes ago, Jerry Diver said:

It's mostly 2 layers because the distributor doesn't sell to customers and the manufacturer doesn't sell to dealers. Maybe if the country is small they might only have a dealer but usually the distributors negotiate to cover a larger area and any outliers.

As a consumer you won't get a direct shipment from Nauticam, they are based in China.

Just as an example of one distributor i know. You can buy anything you like from them direct.

https://fotografit.eu/nauticam-nordic/

Also, on Nauticam own page - you can buy directly from literally every outfit there (and I have from a few of them, and they order things directly from Nauticam, no more "layers" there as far as I am aware):
Note the "distribution center/stocking dealer" checkmarks yield almost the same result. Certainly the same for the outfits on the screenshot.

As for "As a consumer you won't get a direct shipment from Nauticam, they are based in China." - yes HK has unfortunately fallen into the hands to China but its not China technically. And yes, you can order things from Nauticam HK directly with shipping anywhere in the world.

As for China itself, they have a separate unit it seems:

UW camera industry is too small to have such an extensive layered network i would think.
Don't get me wrong, any distributors/shops etc certainly contribute to the price of the housing as they need to make profit too, but i seriously doubt such a huge price increase is because of that. I certainly do not see their owners lining up to buy a Ferrari any time soon.

On 5/3/2022 at 10:03 PM, Carolina A. said:

We are looking at all options and will make what engineering allows 

Hey Carolina,

You have a time line on this?

thanks

Erol