Ramageddon 2026 is Coming for Photographers

The global RAM and NAND shortage driven by AI demand means that creators will feel the impact first through storage and workflow costs before then camera prices rise.

The global memory crunch that increasingly goes under the name “Ramageddon” is often couched in PC terms or understood through games console price rises. Indeed, Nintendo’s Switch 2 is the latest consumer product to have strong rumours of price hikes attached to it, while there are claims Sony is thinking of pushing back the PlayStation 6 to as late as 2029.

• DDR DRAM prices are up anything from 45-70% on last year

• LPDDR5/5X mobile memory used in smartphones is up about 35–55%

• NAND flash is up 25-40%

• CFexpress Type B is up 20-35%

• Enterprise NVMe SSDs are up 30-50%

Cameras in the Blast Zone

In reality the crisis is coming to all of us, and cameras sit squarely at ground zero of the RAM shortage blast radius. Modern imaging hardware relies heavily on high speed DRAM buffers, fast flash storage, and complex imaging processing pipelines that all need hefty amounts of silicon. And when those components rise in price, these features are so locked in that camera manufacturers cannot simply redesign around them.

Media prices are already under pressure. High-performance CFexpress cards, SDXC media, and portable SSDs all rely on the same NAND flash supply chain which is now tightening again after years of overproduction. If you thought you never had it so good, the reason is that you didn't ever have it so good. That comes to an end now. And with the incessant growth of AI infrastructure redirecting fabrication towards high bandwidth memory and supplying enterprise storage showing no sings of slowing down, the cost of recording footage is about to rise.

Camera bodies are not affected yet, but there will be nervous eyes looking at CP+ announcements and checking for increases. Canon has already warned that rising memory costs will impact imaging division expenses this year, and indicated in its latest financials that it is stockpiling components to protect production. This implies that it is not seeing this as a short-term problem, but one that will persist throughout this year and into the next.

The cameras most exposed to Ramageddon are the ones that are pushing the performance boundaries, simply because these are the ones that have the most components in them. The flagship bodies from the likes of Sony, Canon, and Nikon depend on large ultrafast DRAM buffers for burst shooting, stacked sensor readout, high resolution video pipelines, and more. With the RAM prices going up, these cameras are becoming more expensive to manufacture. As yet those hikes have not been passed on the consumer, but it is coming – and that's before we even start wading into the choppy waters surrounding whatever the Trump administration's current tariff threat is.

Different Options

Camera manufacturers have three basic options as a result. One, raise prices; two, trim specifications; three, alter internal architectures to reduce buffer sizes and processing demands — effectively nerfing their own products. As anyone who was buying a car in the middle of the Covid induced supply chain crisis will attest, this is not a comfortable place to be as a consumer. Then, cars were suddenly being shipped without many of the headline features found in the brochures. We didn't get busted as far back as the Stone Age and having to cope with manual windows, but it was close.

Unless you’re buying a Leica or a Hasselblad, you’re not spending as much on a new camera as you are a car. But we can see a definite future where the top end becomes more expensive and a new mid-range tier opens up of formerly dumbed-down high-end cameras. At least the second-hand market will stay strong.

So what's a photographer to do? Probably buy media now if you need it would be the sensible choice. The great AI crash is probably coming, but we don't know exactly when. And until it does people will still spend billions of dollars in equipping silicon-hungry data centers and chip manufacturers will be happy to feed that demand. And while we have not yet seen camera prices go up, if this behaviour is locked in for too many more months that will be an inevitable consequence.

It's either that or camera manufacturers will manage to convince us to accept fewer features, less power, less image processing, perhaps as part of a Dogma-esque return to basics movement. If that happens, you read it here first…