[LargeFormat] Toronto Camera show - report
Joseph O'Neil
largeformat@f32.net
Sun Oct 20 17:03:14 2002
The Toronto Historical photogrpahic society held their annual
trade/swap/vender/whatever you call it show today in Toronto, Canada, just
north fo the airport. I have been going for about ten years, eveyr other year.
Last year I was a bit disappointed, but this year it seemed pretty
good. Lots of junk to be sure, lots of overpriced junk too to be
sure. Isn't every camera show the smae however? :)
One thing I noticed however is one guy I deal with who specializes in
just LF gear, seemed to me to be very busy, at least busier than some of
the other vendors. I waws standing in line to buy some stuff, nd the guy
ahead of me was complaining to the vendor how after about 3-4 years, he was
sick to death of digital and wanted to get back into "real " photography
(my quotes).
He wasn't the only one either, I heard a couple comments that way.
Quite a paradox - there seemed to be a ton of used gear as people move
into digital, but if you looked carefully, the large format gear was
sparse, hard to find and expensive when you did find it.
for exmaple, tons of enlarging lenses around, good ones too, but almost
all 50s and 80 and 105s. Try finding a good 135 or 150 (not that I need
one), and very few lying aobut. Also, I was looking to score a few
lensboards for my spped & grown grpahics. At one time, you could
litterally find stacks of them at $5 Cdn a pop. That's about $3 US Now
hardly anyone has them, and the few I did see were an average of $25 to $40
Cdn (about $15 to $28 US each).
I did pick up a pair of old, beat up super speed graphic lensboard, one
drilled #3, one drilled #4, covered with a top of paint and tape, but after
some elbow grease and various grades of steel wool, I have two lensboards
in sizes I wanted (yeah!)
I guess my point is, while there was a ton used gear from the rush to
digital, there is also a signifigant shift the other way too, especially
into large format. The shift the other way is not nearly as fast, big
or noticeable as the rush to digital, but I think all the doomsays
predicting the death of "traditional" photography - maye it isn't quite
true. :)
The other thing I noticed is, save for the one vendor I was dealing with,
who is nothing pretty much but LF gear, most of the used LF cameras (and
there were not that many) looked like they had been through a war or
more. Now in MF and 35mm, you saw everthing form complete junk to almost
mint quality, but not the LF gear, IMO. Also too, almost all the LF
cameras were monorails, again, save for the one vendor who had a couple
horsemen and some speed & crown graphics, almost no "field" cameras in
LF. Overhearding other people talk, that's what peopel were askig for.
Don't get me wrong, it's not liek you had a huge hall full of rabid,
desperate LF seekign buyers, but I think there has been a noticeable
shift at some levels compared to previous years. Make of it what you will.
Well two weeks from now the Michigan Historical Photo Socisty has thier
annual show in Novi (just outside Detriot). Dunno if I can make it ther,
but hope to go and see for myself how things are there.
joe
http://www.oneilphoto.on.ca
http://www.multiboard.com/~joneil
"Una salus victus nullam sperare salutem"