There was a time when studios would borrow money as high as the moon to have "everything" and to garner the look of success. Sinar/Broncolor could pretty much charge anything they wished and people would pay. They weren't stupid. The cameras themselves probably had a lower percent profit margin than the accessories, just to get you into the system. But they could sure make you bleed with the accessories! It's a business, after all, with a superior product that required a lot of expensive dies, finishing, etc. Same w Linhof. But now so much of the core product can be had for a song. Gosh, I'm running around with a 50 year old Norma that still looks gorgeous, and that I'd rather have than any anodized monorail camera. The bellows are superior to anything Sinar later made; but they must have been very expensive to make in the first place. So go figure. Now Sinar and the accessory lighting and stand market is pretty much sustained by high-end digital studio shooters. They'll never be as big or popular as before. End of an era. One does see an awful lot of battered old Technikas out
there. But they were built for punishment and years and years of hard field use, and inevitably show battle scars. It's easier to find clean Sinar gear because they dominated the studio market, and were better protected, though I personally use Sinar out in the elements.