karl shah-jenner wrote:
I looked again, dragging out my price lists from 1983,84 and 1994,95 and this was what I found
an 'outfit' as the author described it for 35mm generally called for a wide, a standard, a medium long and a long lens and maybe a zoom while a MF outfit called for fewer lenses - a short, standard and medium long, and a LF outfit generally meant either a wide and a standard or a long and a standard as few shooters (so the article went) shot both sides of 'normal'
I dissagree with that..
Anyway, this is what I found
1983:
Canon F1N list price $1400
Leica R4 list price $1900
Rollei SL2000F list price $2100
Bronica SQ-A list price $1500
so far they look kind of the same..
1987: I bought two OM-4T bodies, 24/2, 50/1.8, 35/2, 85/2, 24/3.5PC
lenses, plus 28-90 and 70-210 zooms, new from B&H, for $2700. Mostly I
didn't buy top-of-the-line pro bodies in 35mm (Nikon FM2 and N90 were
the cameras before and after the Olympus period), but this time I did,
and the entire outfit cost not much more than the medium format body
only would have cost.
I pored over the prices in the photo magazines all the time, I assure
you, and the main thing that kept me out of medium format was the *price*.
1995 price lists
Canon F1N $4600
28:2 $1440
50:1.4 $400
135:2 $1400
200:2.8 $1500
80-200:4 $1500
total: $10,840
(I *really* wanted to add my Tamron 200-500:5.6 $3150 to this list ! ;)
You also seem to manage to pay more for lenses than I did, if my memory
can be trusted. *Today* an 80-200/2.8 VR is only $1600 (which would
replace $3000 of lenses off your 1995 list). In 1994 I bought the
80-200/2.8 that I upgraded last year for $450 new.
EOS 1N $3800
EF 28:2.8 $500
EF 50:1.8 $300
EF 300:3.8L $10,400
EF 100-300:5.6 $900
total: $15,900
I'm finding that hard to believe, too. A 50/1.4 is $260 new currently,
and a 300/2.8 (is that a typo in your list?) is about $3900. I've been
following the price of manual focus 300/2.8 lenses since the 1990s, and
they haven't changed that much.
Are those things showing up as dollar signs in my mail reader actually
dollar signs, or something else? Are these prices in US dollars of the
periods?
Nikon F4s $3500
include comparable lenses to the F1N above
total: $12,288
OM4Ti $2500
(no lenss prices available, ie, POA)
Yeah, here we come really hard up against my own experience, since I
bought an entire OM4-T system with two bodies and a lot of lenses for
$2700 in 1987.
LF:
Cambo SCN $1500
Linhof Technorama 6x12 PC-11 $3295
Linhof Kardan GT45 $3100
Add the following lenses as suitable:
Grandagon 90:6.8 $$1640
Sironar 150:5.6 $896
Apo-Ronar 240:9 $1500
LF was considerably cheaper, hence my 4x5 monorail (and just on lens,
210mm). The tripod cost nearly as much as the body, as I recall :-).
As it turns out I haven't done much with 4x5, but it's *not* because of
the price (and that's the only film camera other than toys and museum
pieces that I still have).
to me it still today looks as it did back then when I first read this and looked into it - sure, I'm comparing apples with oranges, but if you take the idea that a good 'outfit' can be comparably priced and consider how many lenses 35mm shooters use compared to MF shooters, or LF shooters (both who generally do NOT aspire to own the whole lens range!) it kinda does come out even if not cheaper for a LF 'kit' than for a 35mm 'kit'
It's also worth bearing in mind that MF and LF camera lenses are pretty limitted. There's not so much the 'L series' syndrome 35mm shooters are faced with.
In fact, I think a big part of the difference is there aren't any
mid-range options in MF, there are *only* top-end options. I never
owned a Nikon F series camera until I had a very old original F for a
few years fairly recently; I had things like FM, FM2, N90. And I didn't
own a Nikon 300/2.8, I had a Tamron. And my 80-200/2.8 was a Tokina
($450) until last year. Sometimes it might cost as much to get a basic
outfit in 35mm as some of the MF if you bought only the very
top-of-the-line pro equipment -- although I did that with my Olympus,
and it was nowhere near the cost of MF (I explicitly considered spending
that money on going to MF instead of switching to Olympus 35mm gear, but
it just wouldn't do the job).
I note on this price list Canon has (1995) over 54 lenses listed, with no less than 20 L series lenses. As you can guess a $20,000 lens added to the list would be a bit iffy but then hey - Rollei's most expensive is less than $8000. Canon lists five lenses exceeding this price. Rodenstock's large format range has only one lens in the $8000 range, the next dearest is less than $6000
it's a stupid argument if one wanted to throw comparisons backward and forward - but looking realistically at a good kit, LF and MF kit prices are not so much more (if at all more) than a good 35mm outfit
nowhere did I see MF as tremendously more expensive .
But seeing MF as tremendously more expensive was a constant of my
photographic life for 30 years, based on studying the magazine prices
nearly every month. I drooled over the Mamiya RB67 and 645, and I did
end up owning two non-system MF cameras that I *could* afford (plus the
weird Norita Graflex, which I was given). But the prices were just too
astronomical, I couldn't afford them.
And in fact I was verifying my memories somewhat in a friend's old
Modern Photography collection just a few months ago. I think I'll have
access to that collection again in February, I'll see if I can't record
some figures out of it.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
