Adolph Gasser

[Eric_6227]

I never met Adolph Gasser, but I got my first real camera in his shop and plenty of other supplies and help along the way.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/04/02/BAGEUI24RL1.DTL

[John Kasaian]

I think Ansel Adams bought stuff at Gasser's. Do they still sell model trains too?

[Bob Salomon]

John,

Adolph Gasser was married in Carmel in Ansel Adam's house. Adams was Adolph's best man.

So he probably bought some things from Adolph as well.

[Dean Cookson]

No trains when I was in there last month. They did want $1700 or something for a Beseler 45 MCRX though...

[John Kasaian]

The trains would have been at the original (?) location. I've been to the downtown store---in fact I bought my first 'dorff lensboard from them. I also saw a 165 Super Angulon for the first time at Gasser's. I remember being impressed with how big and heavy (and expensive) the thing was.

The last time I was there, a guy in the basement (I think he was the large format expert on duty) told me an interesting story. He was digitalizing all the class photos for a local high school that had been around for something like 90 years. His observation was that the expressions on the faces of the students degenerated as things in the nieghborhhod improved. As I recall:

Depression era kids had a cocky, self assured look (the school was in a blue collar nieghborhood then)

WW2 era kids, appraoching draft age, had a more mature before their time, confident look to them (who knows how many would be dead or crippled in the months and years ahead?)

1950's kids had a happy go lucky immature look about them. Post-war boom-time.

The 1990's kids looked spoiled & disinterested shabbily dressed (the area had become a wealthy nieghborhood)

The last crop of grads (2000) looked distinctly dispondent and full of dispair(the area was now obscenely wealthy)

He then showed my some class shots and dang if he wasn't right!

Sobering observation! I've got to love a store like that!

[Emmanuel BIGLER]

In 1990, the Ansel Adams center was still there at the corner of 3-rd and Mission downtown SFO.
I had no idea of what a master B&W print was in reality, I only knew reproductions from books & postcards.
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Leaving the small exhibition, still under the influence of what I had seen, and dreaming about what I could do next time I would visit Yosemite, walking at random around, I found without looking for it Gasser's shop in 2-nd street. A pure coincidence, for sure.

Exactly like when you leave the International Watch Museum in La-Chaux-de-Fonds, in the Swiss Jura, still dreaming of all the nice time pieces and fine mechanisms you' ve just admired (if you come during the week, you can also admire master watchmakers at work repairing precious old clocks, just in front of you) , without looking or it, you find several shops selling affordable, nice, used mechanical watches. A pure coincidence, also ;-);-)

[Scott Davis]

My experience of Gasser's has been mostly arrogant sales staff with exorbitantly priced used gear. They did have a pretty good minilab though. The latest shock to me was when I went in there about a year or so ago and looked for a used 50mm for my Hasselblad. They had a black C type lens, in the plastic bubble. The lens was in excellent condition cosmetically. They wanted more for it by a several hundred dollar margin, than Keeble & Schuchat wanted for a mint-minus CF FLE 50mm.

If you are looking for good prices on a wide range of format gear in the Bay area, pop down to Palo Alto and check out Keeble & Schuchat.

[Christopher Nisperos]

In the periods for which I worked for him, I found Adolph Gasser to be a nice man. As well as cameras and model trains —as has already been noted here— Adolph also liked to work on Dodge Dart automobiles (if memory serves me right).
In my dictionary of cool guys, that fact alone gives him a few brownie points. Not to mention that he was quite a mechanical genius. When custom-made stuff needed to be created in the rental department, Adolph —even at an advanced age— could come up with viable solutions.

In spite of the relatively higher prices that his stores were always known to charge, I hope that Adolph Gasser will be remebered for providing the Bay Area its first reliable, consistent, polyvalent (he offered a complete selection of photo, cinema and audio equipment in one location, before most in the SF Bay Area) professional photographic service (IMHO).

Adolph was always in sync. Ask Nikon.