You would think that Calumet would be out there pushing LF. They own Cambo and still sell field cameras under the Zone VI label. It could be the interest of the sales people at a particular store, or it could be that each store stock what is in demand. Calumet is also a co-sponsor of that Silver International (or whatever they call it) along with Ilford. It seems that from the corporate perspective they are trying to stay in the analog and LF game.
In speaking with one of their salespeople, I found out some interesting things. While Calumet still is committed to film, it is impossible to overestimate how much of their business now comes from people using digital. It's not so much that they push one product or another, they are just interested in filling people's needs (like all retail stores to some extent). They wouldn't be pushing digital so much if 80% of their customers weren't coming in to buy digital inks and papers and digital cameras and hard drives. Why would you be pushing 8x10 film and cameras if you were fielding 60 calls a day about when the new 1DS was coming out? When I worked at a camera store in the 90's, we would have sold all pinhole cameras if that's what brought people in the front doors. No camera store, be it B&H or Calumet, make much money at all on the cameras or other hardware. It's all the accessories and high turn items.
Morgan
Will, Calumet still sells gobs of sheet film, and provides good support via phone and email, even if the stores are hit-or-miss. What amazed me is that Hunt Photo was listed - it's been years since they've had anything to do with LF, other than perhaps selling a stray box of 4x5 film once in a while.
--Oren Grad 2006-01-07 10:07 PST
Oren-
Gary from Hunt's is their LF guy... I met him at the View Camera conference in Springfield last year, and he now calls me about once a month (sometimes more often) with deals on LF film. They've become very serious and aggressive about selling LF film - I think they worked a deal with Fuji to help them empty their film freezers when their stock gets short-dated.
Scott, thanks for the tip. If the deals are about clearing out color film, it's not of any use to me, since I do B&W only. In any case, I appreciate hearing from you (and Phil further up in the thread) that Hunt has become more serious in this area - although I'm currently in discussions with Calumet about my Ilford special order, sounds like I ought to check with Hunt after all before making a decision.
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