Welcome to the first Cameraworth Report. Cameraworth is an open price guide for used cameras: what they actually sold for, free to read, with the method published alongside it. If there is a camera or a question you want covered, tell us. Reader interest is how we choose what to dig into next.
The number
Used camera prices in the UK are softening. The typical collectable camera sold at UK auction in the twelve months to July 2026 went for 5.7% less than the same camera a year earlier, across 1,608 sales of 82 models.
It is a drift rather than a slump, and it is not new. Prices have been easing for the best part of three years — negative in thirty of the thirty-six months we have measured.
Breadth
It is not one market, though. Of the 82 models, 46 were worth less than a year earlier, 34 more and 2 the same — the fall is wide but shallow. What it really depends on is the kind of camera:
| Group | Change | Pattern over the year |
|---|---|---|
| 35mm SLRs | −7.3% | negative every month since September 2025 |
| 35mm compacts | −8.5% | no pattern; it jumps about |
| Medium format | −3.5% | flat all year, averaging −0.4% |
| 35mm rangefinders | +5.6% | up three months running, after six near −18% |
Really this is an SLR story: they are the only group falling steadily. Rangefinders are the one group that has turned.
Inside the SLR fall: Nikon
SLRs took most of the fall, so we looked at Nikon to see what was happening inside it.
All seven of Nikon’s professional bodies were worth less than a year ago — down 17.6%, against 5.7% for cameras generally — and the cheaper enthusiast bodies did much the same, down 16.2%. It is not a story about autofocus going out of fashion: the manual F, F2 and F3 fell alongside the autofocus F4 and F5.
The two ends are converging: the F3 fell, the FM rose.
| Last year | This year | |
|---|---|---|
| F3 — professional | £271 | £216 |
| FM — enthusiast | £84 | £120 |
A year ago an F3 cost more than three times an FM. Now it costs less than twice.
Canon’s SLRs fell too, but nothing like as far
Canon’s most-traded film SLRs got the same test. They moved down, but not far: the group is off 6.9%, against 16.2% for Nikon’s equivalent cameras.
| Last year | This year | |
|---|---|---|
| A-1 | £88 | £87 |
| AE-1 | £75 | £70 |
| F-1 | £175 | £163 |
| AE-1 Program | £75 | £66 |
Only the AE-1 Program shifted further than it usually does in a year. The rest sit inside their normal range, and that is the finding: a Canon SLR is worth about what it was worth last summer, and a Nikon is not.
Pocket cameras fell, but not Olympus’s
Across all makes, 35mm compacts fell 8.5% over the year — and that figure already includes Olympus, whose own pocket cameras were worth 17.6% more than a year earlier. Its OM SLRs, meanwhile, did not move at all as a group, and the cheapest of them fell.
| Last year | This year | |
|---|---|---|
| XA-2 — pocket | £50 | £69 |
| Mju II — pocket | £168 | £225 |
| OM-10 — SLR | £62 | £50 |
What rose was Olympus’s, not the pocket camera.
What came up in July
Almost all of July went through one room: 163 of the month’s 168 lots were sold by Flints on 7 July, so this is one auction’s month, not the market’s.
The top lot was a Zeh Zeca-Flex at £575, a 1930s German folding twin-lens — thirteen sales in twenty-eight years of records. A Gandolfi tailboard made £375, also thirteen sales in that time, and a Paillard Bolex H-16 Reflex cine camera £562, from ten. Familiar things at familiar money: a Nikon 35Ti at £362, a Canon IVSb at £312, a Leitz IIIf at £350.
Two of the better prices were not cameras: a Leitz Focomat V35 enlarger at £562 and a Kodak Aero-Ektar lens at £350. The month’s biggest price was not in a saleroom at all — a Nikon 800mm f/5.6 lens on eBay, £5,587.
None of these enter the figures above; they are simply what the month looked like.
What we’re watching
After six months near −18%, rangefinders’ last three were positive, ending the year up 5.6%. The climb off the bottom is bigger than that group normally manages; the level it has reached is not. Does a fourth month hold above zero? We will report the same figure.
A few others we will put the same question to:
- Does the gap between Nikon’s F3 and FM carry on closing?
- Do Olympus’s pocket cameras hold what they gained, or was it a good run of examples?
- Canon’s SLRs have sat still for a year. Do they stay there while Nikon’s fall?
We are also working back through older auction results, so a later edition can show ten years rather than one.
Cite this
The Cameraworth Report, August 2026 (covering sales to 31 July 2026). Camley Photographic Limited.
https://www.cameraworth.com/reports/2026-08/
How these figures are put together, what the data covers, and where it falls short: cameraworth.com/methodology
Reading the figure. The twelve-month windows overlap, so “negative in thirty of the thirty-six months we have measured” describes thirty overlapping readings of one gentle decline — not thirty separate falls. How the headline figure is built is set out on our methodology page.