34 of those models were worth more than a year earlier and 46 were worth less. Every row below shows the sample it is built on, in both periods, so you can judge which lines to believe. Where a model is thin, treat it as an anecdote rather than a trend.

Covering sales to 31 July 2026.

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%

Only moves larger than a camera’s normal year-to-year swing are named below.

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

Methodology note — pending. Our methodology page sets out how individual sale prices are collected, matched and checked, but it does not yet explain how this report’s headline figure is built: the rolling twelve-month windows, the median-of-medians method behind “the typical camera”, and what a real-terms comparison would mean here. That section is being written and will be published there shortly.

One point matters for reading the figure above in the meantime. 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.

Biggest risers

Median price in the year to 31 July 2026, against the year before.

Model	Year to 31 July 2025	Year to 31 July 2026	Change
Micro Precision Products (MPP) Microcord Mk II	£28n = 4	£78n = 4	+178.6%
Bolex H16 Reflex	£600n = 7	£1,300n = 5	+116.7%
Leitz I (A)	£434n = 14	£857n = 6	+97.6%
Corfield (K.G.) Corfield 66	£88n = 6	£145n = 4	+64.2%
Leitz Leicaflex	£130n = 10	£209n = 12	+61.4%
Mamiya Press	£138n = 9	£220n = 5	+59.4%
Leitz R4S	£95n = 7	£150n = 5	+57.9%
Leitz IIf	£200n = 5	£305n = 4	+52.5%
Zeiss Ikon Contarex Bullseye	£175n = 6	£250n = 8	+42.9%
Nikon FM	£85n = 22	£120n = 11	+42.0%
Olympus OM-4	£88n = 9	£124n = 10	+40.9%
Olympus XA-2	£50n = 12	£69n = 9	+38.0%
Olympus Mju II	£168n = 10	£225n = 11	+34.3%
Minolta X-700	£55n = 13	£72n = 4	+30.9%
Leitz M2	£753n = 10	£985n = 6	+30.8%

Biggest fallers

Model	Year to 31 July 2025	Year to 31 July 2026	Change
Voigtlander& Sohn Bessamatic	£79n = 6	£30n = 5	−62.0%
Yashica Yashica-Mat 124 G	£225n = 4	£100n = 4	−55.6%
Leitz R8	£328n = 4	£147n = 6	−55.1%
Mamiya RB67	£482n = 6	£245n = 4	−49.1%
Leitz Ic	£362n = 5	£208n = 6	−42.5%
Leitz Leicaflex SL	£180n = 21	£106n = 9	−41.1%
Rollei 35 B	£50n = 6	£30n = 4	−40.0%
Canon AV-1	£69n = 7	£42n = 4	−39.1%
Rollei Rolleiflex 3.5F	£625n = 16	£400n = 6	−36.0%
Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta	£60n = 11	£39n = 8	−35.0%
Nikon Nikkormat FT	£38n = 7	£25n = 5	−34.2%
Nikon NIKONOS V	£219n = 4	£144n = 6	−34.1%
Canon EOS 5D Mark II	£240n = 5	£160n = 5	−33.3%
Rollei Rolleiflex Automat (MX-sync.) (Type 1)	£175n = 4	£119n = 4	−32.0%
Olympus mju-1	£88n = 9	£60n = 9	−31.8%

Median price by brand

Brands with at least 30 sales in each period. This is the median of everything that brand sold, so it moves with the mix of models coming to market as well as with prices — a year heavy in bodies rather than rarities pulls it down. The model table above is the mix-controlled one.

Brand	Year to 31 July 2025	Year to 31 July 2026	Change
Leitz	£345n = 386	£262n = 301	−24.1%
Nikon	£150n = 376	£120n = 291	−20.0%
Canon	£88n = 217	£101n = 165	+14.8%
Olympus	£70n = 218	£75n = 160	+7.1%
Rollei	£162n = 169	£188n = 114	+16.0%
Asahi Pentax	£75n = 106	£75n = 84	0.0%
Zeiss Ikon	£81n = 107	£75n = 75	−7.4%
Mamiya	£178n = 80	£275n = 70	+54.9%
Hasselblad	£1,000n = 101	£973n = 58	−2.8%
Kodak	£70n = 39	£62n = 55	−11.4%
Yashica	£75n = 47	£38n = 49	−49.3%
Voigtlander& Sohn	£100n = 62	£81n = 44	−19.0%
Contax	£260n = 31	£106n = 43	−59.2%
Minolta	£56n = 138	£56n = 31	+0.9%

The index over time

The same measure recomputed at each month end — each point compares the twelve months ending then against the twelve before it. Consecutive points share eleven of their twelve months, so the line moves smoothly and a single month’s sales never swing it; read the direction, not the step. Points are shown with the number of models behind them, and the series begins where that count becomes large enough to be worth reading.

Twelve months to	Change	Models
April 2024	−5.8%	41
May 2024	−8.6%	44
June 2024	+6.7%	44
July 2024	+2.5%	47
August 2024	−7.0%	52
September 2024	−9.0%	56
October 2024	−7.4%	60
November 2024	−8.8%	63
December 2024	−5.1%	66
January 2025	−5.4%	70
February 2025	0.0%	75
March 2025	−3.7%	81
April 2025	0.0%	79
May 2025	−2.5%	84
June 2025	0.0%	82
July 2025	−0.5%	82
August 2025	+4.2%	81
September 2025	−3.3%	91
October 2025	−4.9%	99
November 2025	−5.7%	97
December 2025	−7.0%	96
January 2026	−3.3%	101
February 2026	0.0%	106
March 2026	−5.3%	102
April 2026	−7.2%	100
May 2026	−7.2%	100
June 2026	−6.9%	91
July 2026	−5.7%	82

How this is calculated

The index covers cameras sold at UK auction in pounds sterling. Current period: 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026. Prior period: 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025.

For every model with at least 4 sales in each period we take the median price in each, and divide one by the other. The headline is the median of those ratios across all 82 models.

Comparing each model against itself is the point. A plain median of everything sold would move whenever the mix of what came to market changed — one Leica-heavy season would read as a market rising. Matching model to model removes that. It is the same reasoning behind a repeat-sales house price index.

Full detail of where the underlying records come from, and how they are checked, is on our methodology page.

What this cannot tell you

Five things, and we would rather say them than have you find them.

Condition is not controlled for. We do not yet grade consistently enough to hold condition constant, so a model whose better examples happened to come up this year will look like it rose. This is the largest single weakness in the figure.
The salerooms we see changed. Our coverage is not a fixed panel, and a house entering or leaving shifts what we observe independently of prices. The counts are below.
Not every price is on the same basis. Some houses publish hammer, some publish the price including buyer’s premium, and several do not state which. See the methodology page.
eBay is excluded, and so is everything not in sterling. Marketplace sales are a different kind of transaction from a saleroom lot, our eBay record only begins partway through these periods, and we do not convert currencies. Including any of it would measure our own coverage rather than the market.
Lenses are excluded. Our lens records still group some optics by line rather than by individual lens, so a “lens” figure would track which focal length happened to sell. Lenses join the index when that is fixed, not before.

Salerooms behind these figures

Saleroom	Prior period	Current period
Flints Auctions	1,923	1,998
Special Auction Services	951	776
Chiswick Auctions	426	157
Harperfield Auctions	330	0
Tennants Auctioneers	73	43
David Duggleby	53	13
Cullens of Surrey	52	0
London Camera & Antique Auction	0	5

Citing this edition

Journalists, bloggers and researchers are welcome to use these figures. We ask for a link back so readers can check them. This edition is fixed — its numbers will not change under a citation.

CameraWorth, The UK Vintage Camera Price Index — August 2026. Published 16 August 2026. https://www.cameraworth.com/reports/2026-08/

If you want a cut of the data we do not publish here — a particular brand, a longer run, the underlying records — ask: info@cameraworth.com.