----- Original Message ----- From: "David Dyer-Bennet" : 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*. : 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. those were Australian dollars and Australian list prices. : : : > 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. No, that is no typo - that's what we got charged here for such a lens. The price list confirms it. : 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? they are in Australian dollars, from an Australian price list - these were the prices we paid here, as listed, for medium, small and large format.. : > 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. I'm sure you did. : : > 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 :-). : > 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. this is the one you priced compared to the Canon I listed above? : 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). It's funny, mt grandfather always had hasselblad and my first MF was a mamiya TLR until I could afford the hasselblad. I regretted buying the Hassy not long after I got it, and sold it - to happily replace it with another few Mamiya TLR's :) I also have a graflex XLSW with a 47mmSA and a few others, but the Mamiyas were (cheap-ish) cameras I really enjoyed using :) Oh, and a pair of Mamiya 645's.. : : > 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. the mamiya RB67 /RZ's were pretty cheap here! : : 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. it's weird, around the world prices vary so much. I'd always found it hard to look at the US price listings, they'd make you cry compared to what we paid here. At the camera distributors I worked at, I talked the company into buying from the US.. we could get cameras cheaper, by airmail, paying retail prices, and custom agent fees - cheaper (I stress) than we could get even with a major distributors discount from Canon/Nikon/Pentax Australia (respectively) I guess I figured if we paid high for 35mm then we must too have been paying higher for MF, but if you say the US prices were higher again then I guess you're right. karl
