karl shah-jenner wrote:
----- 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.
Excellent! That is, I was having a really hard time getting my memories
to agree with your numbers; and I have no slightest reason to suspect
you're making up your numbers, and paper is more stable than memory
:-). And having it be Australian rather than US dollars is probably
enough to make the whole thing collapse into sense.
Well, except the part about 35mm and MF costing the same for a basic
outfit, anyway. But the individual numbers I was getting hung up on
work out much better (particularly since the AD and USD have moved
somewhat relative to each other over the period we're discussing).
:
:
: > 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.
I meant the "3.8", not the price.
: > 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?
The Tamron 300/2.8? I got that one used, in fact, for about $1k. The
Tokina 80-200/2.8 was in 1994, part of the move back to Nikon/move to AF
for me.
(I'm not sure I understood your question, but I hope the answer is
somewhere in the collection of information there.)
: 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 started 35mm with my mother's old Bolsey 35 (rangefinder, fixed lens),
then bought a Miranda Sensorex with 50/1.4, traded that in a complex
deal for a big Pentax system (lenses from 28mm to 400mm! *Automatic*
flash!), picked up a used Leica M3 around the same time, had it all
stolen, started over with a Nikon FM (around 1980 now), went to Olympus
in 1987 for the multi-spot metering, then back to Nikon in 1994 for the
AF, then a digital P&S in 2000 and my first DSLR in 2003.
The multi-spot metering was cool enough, but overall (and because
Olympus missed the AF boat and my experiments showed me that AF was a
win for what I did) the Olympus detour was not a big success. So maybe
I should have spent that money on MF equipment after all!
:
: > 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!
Must be nice! :-)
:
: 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.
Yes, I'm sure that's a big part of it.
I'd always found it hard to look at the US price listings, they'd make you cry compared to what we paid here.
Most of my life we've been pretty lucky with 35mm prices, I think.
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.
People keep wanting me to get rid of "junk", but it'd be handy to have
some of those old magazines just now! For this purpose, just keeping
one issue a year would do ("Modern" and "Popular" photography were
useful mostly for the ads anyway).
--
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
