Have you ever been mocked for LF?

[Drew Wiley]

Not exactly mocked. Because it looks like survey equipment, I got accused of being a spy for Al Gore and his invasion with the UN to steal everyone's cattle. Those guys out on the highways with their tripods and making little marks on the road are part of the conspiracy too. Everybody knew that. Sounds nutty, but this kind of information was being deliberately disseminated among naive ranchers and sagebrush rebellion types, and it almost cost me my life. Of course, the UN probably couldn't successfully invade the roadside rest stop at Arbuckle, but don't tell them that. I had a choice between whacking someone with that big Ries to save my own life, and potentially killing them, or thinking really fast. As his armed wannabee militia was heading uphill on ATV's, I convinced him to make a citizens arrest of a foreign agent (me). It took hours being held at gunpoint, but finally an authentic deputy showed up, and as we drove off together in the patrol car, had a good laugh together. I never filed charges. Better having eccentric ranchers in charge of the land than developers.

[Jim Galli]

Doubly mocked since it was a fellow who leads workshops. We began together in the Nikon 35mm ~ Velvia 50 days but he went on his digital path and I went on my ever larger and weirder formats path. We re-met years later. I was in an aspen grove east of Yosemite with the 7X17 and he did some digital snaps of me and said he would put them in his book as "what not to do".

The picture in the aspen grove sucked . . but I'm a really slow learner with a very hard head.

Oh, and I think his pumped up grossly over-sharpened digital pictures with the reds dripping off the canvas look like stuff a Walt Disney illustrator concocted.

[ROL]

...with the reds dripping off the canvas look like stuff a Walt Disney illustrator concocted.

I assume that means you finally extracted comeuppance from the lout by physical recompense using one of those gigantic old lenses you're always carrying about.

[Jim Galli]

I assume that means you finally extracted comeuppance from the lout by physical recompense using one of those gigantic old lenses you're always carrying about.

Why, thrashing him with a 13 pound lens never entered my mind ;~'))

[David Lobato]

About a week ago the proprietor of a camera shop raised his eyebrow when I mentioned my 8x10 Deardorff. He said digital has excellent quality and there is no reason to use LF. That was after he gazed speechless for a moment at a print I showed him, taken with the Deardorff. It was a friendly shop and I will likely go there again.

[Liquid Artist]

I get mocked all the time, by none other than my future wife.

She used to be a model, and the photographer who did all the shoots was a machine gun shooter. As a result, even after 3 years together she still thinks I should do the same. However she also loves my work, and says lt blows his away.
Oh, she is the least patient person I have ever met.

I am trying to convince her to bring along a book, or something to pass the time when I want to go on a shoot. She wants to but hasn't yet.

Other than that, I've only had one person tell me I should switch to medium format digital.
He could not understand how anyone could prefer working in a darkroom rather than in front of a computer all day long.

[Robert Opheim]

I knew Ed for about that period of time also. He sold out in 1996 because he was going blind from diabetes. (He realized it was time to stop driving when he blew a stoplight he couldn't see and someone did a major skid and turn to avoid him and he said to himself, "Man, I'm glad he could see because I sure can't." He gave up the keys and that was the end of that. He sold out soon after.) I got to be friends with his son, Nick, also and once went with Nick to some of his father's hidey-holes around the neighborhood and Greater Ballard. Ed had a *lot* of stuff. When the big camera sale in Puyallup happened, Nick would take a bunch of crap down there to sell and Ed would stay in Seattle. A couple of times, he showed me some of the stuff he had ready to sell to overseas buyers who were going to be in town for the show. He would only open to invited customers on the Saturday morning of the show. I never got invited because I wasn't going to buy anything and he was going to have some heavy hitters in there who didn't want anyone to see what they were doing. He had some really rare stuff. He showed me a Nikon F he would sell to a collector for $10,000 and, at one time, he had about 15 Hasselblad 1600Fs and 1000Fs in a display case going from $1K to $5K depending on condition and rarity. He had the third 1600F off the production line in there. When he closed, he had already sold all of the good stuff and sold what was left on a "take it all or take nothing" to a guy named "Chuck the Peddler" who had a week long sale of the excess in a warehouse in Ballard. There was some way cool stuff- a Kodak Autofocus 8x10 enlarger with a custom cold light head for one but, as I said, almost all of the cool stuff was gone. On one of the shelves were about 75 Kodak 16mm Home Movie cameras from the 40s. Plus a couple of hundred box Brownies. His method of acquiring this stuff mainly was estate sales and most of them were of the "take all or take nothing" variety. So, along with the good stuff came a lot of crap. I remember Clyed's downtown. When Clyed's got out of the LF business, Ed bought all of it from them and sold it in his store. I recognized it but Ed would get offended if you asked him where he got stuff. I was in there on a Saturday afternoon and a guy asked him if he had any screw thread Canons. This guy was obviously a repeat customer because Nick brought out 15 cameras for him to look at. The Camera Show was the kind of place you just had to check into regularly if you wanted the good stuff. It was on kind of a trapline I would run every Saturday afternoon. I frequently would buy some holders- 4x5 and 8x10- if he had any even if I didn't really need any. Loved his sales policies. 30 day no argue MBG and pay with a credit card- full price. Pay with cash? Minus 7.5 %. No MBG? Minus 7.5% Pay with cash, traveller's checks and no MBG? 15% off. On stuff like books and view cameras that you could tell if it was OK just by looking at it, I'd take the 15%. Lenses and bodies I usually paid cash and took the MBG. I got to know him well enough that he would take a personal check and call it cash.

I did a lot of supply business with Dick's Camera in Burien. I bought my first camera (an Exa) and my second camera (A Leotax F with a 50/1.8 Canon which was one of the really good Leica copies from the fifties) from Dick Dalgard. Still have them both. Dick passed away just last year. Never been to Kenmore Camera. Too far off my regular path and they never gave me any reason to go out of my way. Optechs up Republican St. from Glazer's was a pretty good stopping place, too.

Color. That's what has left Seattle. Color. Down in South Lake Union, there used to be all sorts of cool industrial crap to look at and buy. I went to a friend's daughter's wedding last year in the S Lake Union area and, the outside of the building looked familiar. When I got inside, I realized it was a place I had gotten marine parts like generators, carburetors and transmissions rebuilt twenty years earlier. What a waste. My uncle was a contractor and I sometimes was sent down there to get things from a place called "T and A Supply". T was 'Trim" and A was "Accessories" and they sold things like door hinges, screen doors and stuff to install carpets. I got a "T and A Supply" hat there once and had it for years. Just look at all the big buildings so Amazon can rape and pillage the bookseller and publishing industry and line the pockets of Paul Allen... Ah, that's enough...

Ed had a number of really rare cameras - I remember him finding a first generation Kodak - the camera you sent the camera back to Kodak for film processing and printing (probably contact printing); he had big circuit cameras - one he sold to a Seattle Fireman who was very active in taking images around town - I think it was a 7x around 36 inch image. He had Hypergons that he showed to me - they were beyond my ability to buy. I bought a number on lenses from him: a 12 inch Velostigmat with variable soft focus, a 160mm Hugo Meyer WA, a 90mm Grandagon. A professional Junior tripod, numerous film holders. His place was a treat to go in. You are right about what has happen to Seattle - most of the small retail and industrial, as well as almost all of the photographic related, businesses are gone. No Color!

[Jody_S]

Have I ever been mocked for LF? Never to my face. While I'm under the dark cloth, who knows?

[jbenedict]

Ed had a number of really rare cameras - I remember him finding a first generation Kodak - the camera you sent the camera back to Kodak for film processing and printing (probably contact printing); he had big circuit cameras - one he sold to a Seattle Fireman who was very active in taking images around town - I think it was a 7x around 36 inch image. He had Hypergons that he showed to me - they were beyond my ability to buy. I bought a number on lenses from him: a 12 inch Velostigmat with variable soft focus, a 160mm Hugo Meyer WA, a 90mm Grandagon. A professional Junior tripod, numerous film holders. His place was a treat to go in. You are right about what has happen to Seattle - most of the small retail and industrial, as well as almost all of the photographic related, businesses are gone. No Color!

He had some stuff, that is for sure. I remember the early Kodak. The prints came back round images on a strip- like the negatives were laid out on paper and exposed. I had forgotten about the Cirkut cameras. I think that was one of his specialties for awhile. He did have one of the firefighter pictures up in the store. I only saw the Hypergon once when he had it out for someone else. I always wondered just what he actually had in his back room. I got my B&J 8x10 and 375/6,8 Ilex from him. Some Hasselblad stuff, a couple of lenses in and out for the 8x10. I bought a lot of books for my photo class from him as well as some developing trays and tanks. It was a lot of fun to go and see him.

[Jac@stafford.net]

Mocked once by a college student for 'the accordion camera', but he was the same one who laughed, "Can't you afford a new one?" when he learned I drove a '56 Harley and drove a '58 VW Bug. I didn't tell him I was dating a woman his age. Enough was enough.