Current Stage of LF Photography (2020)

Lenses : Nothing to worry about since there's a glut of excellent LF lenses, often in superb condition, at very low pricing these days. Yes, a few items have skyrocketed in price due to cult status (deserved or not), or else fluctuating supply and demand issues on certain specialty lenses less common to begin with. Lenses having relatively modern shutters could still give many decades of reliable use. It's not like digital camera gear that goes obsolete at a rapid pace. But that's one of the reason why high-quality mechanical camera gear is basically doomed with respect to ongoing manufacture. There's more money in consumer electronics that need constant replacement, products engineered to go quickly obsolete. Not too many miles from me there's an old rural fire station where the same porch lamp has burned continuously for well over a hundred years. Thick globe, thick filament. No big secret. But the company that made it went out of business in just a few years because it wasn't an expendable bulb. Hence the business lesson, and junkier and junkier light bulbs ever since.

DREW WILEY said:

Lenses : Nothing to worry about since there's a glut of excellent LF lenses, often in superb condition, at very low pricing these days. Yes, a few items have skyrocketed in price due to cult status (deserved or not), or else fluctuating supply and demand issues on certain specialty lenses less common to begin with. Lenses having relatively modern shutters could still give many decades of reliable use. It's not like digital camera gear that goes obsolete at a rapid pace. But that's one of the reason why high-quality mechanical camera gear is basically doomed with respect to ongoing manufacture. There's more money in consumer electronics that need constant replacement, products engineered to go quickly obsolete. Not too many miles from me there's an old rural fire station where the same porch lamp has burned continuously for well over a hundred years. Thick globe, thick filament. No big secret. But the company that made it went out of business in just a few years because it wasn't an expendable bulb. Hence the business lesson, and junkier and junkier light bulbs ever since.

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I have replaced all of our lightbulbs with Cree LED bulbs. They have a 10 year guarantee. Since I put them in 2 ½ years ago 5 have burned out. But at least Cree just sent me a box of 6 replacement bulbs. The day after they came another one burned out!

CFL's can be even worse. Terrible on the eyes, rated for 7 yrs, and you're lucky to get a month out of them. Basically a scam.
My favorite warranties are "lifetime". Since many of the companies involved are short-term mergers and acquisitions lasting only a couple of years or so, they have nothing to lose by making ridiculous warranty claims to begin with.

DREW WILEY said:

CFL's can be even worse. Terrible on the eyes, rated for 7 yrs, and you're lucky to get a month out of them. Basically a scam.
My favorite warranties are "lifetime". Since many of the companies involved are short-term mergers and acquisitions lasting only a couple of years or so, they have nothing to lose by making ridiculous warranty claims to begin with.

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Karl Heitz, the man and the distribution company, established Gitzo in the USA and he offered a lifetime warranty on the tripods. He was very surprised at Photokina one year when he saw us walking out of the office area of the Gitzo booth and then saw some other U.S. distributors do also. Gitzo was looking to change distributors and he had no idea they would.
After Photokina the distribution was changed and the lifetime warranty ended as the warranty was extended by the importer/distributor to the retail purcheser and the new distributor had no interest in that type of warranty, this occurred before Manfrotto bought Gitzo.

of course the interesting question was “what lifetime”? The owners or the products?

Bob S said:

Karl Heitz, the man and the distribution company, established Gitzo in the USA and he offered a lifetime warranty on the tripods....

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Bob, you're forgetting that it was way longer than that.

Bob S said:

of course the interesting question was “what lifetime”? The owners or the products?

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So the real interesting question was "how many incarnations?"

Oren Grad said:

Bob, you're forgetting that it was way longer than that.

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So the real interesting question was "how many incarnations?"

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Karl was an interesting guy.
He gave his sales force Jaguars as company cars but while he liked their design he did not like their engine and drive train. So he had them replaced with Chevy engines and drive trains!

at PMA one year he invited me to join he and his girls, except for one salesman all of the rest were women, he wanted to go to a very fancy French restaurant an easy walk from the LV Hilton.

when we got their it was very French rustic in design and service and they seated us at a large round table. They then put a basket of bread on the center of the table.
While we watched a very larch cockroach climbed out of the basket and ran across the table and into the lap of the woman that called on the west coast. She then let out a very large scream!

none of us ate bread that night, even though they brought us a new basket.

A routine trick these days is to advertise something as having a "lifetime replacement warranty", then right after that item has been mass-produced and distributed, make some minor cosmetic tweak to it with a new model number, so that when someone shows up with an inevitably failed piece of substandard equipment in their hands not very long after purchase, the response will be that any replacement cannot be fulfilled because that specific model has been discontinued.

Bob S said:

I have replaced all of our lightbulbs with Cree LED bulbs. They have a 10 year guarantee. Since I put them in 2 ½ years ago 5 have burned out. But at least Cree just sent me a box of 6 replacement bulbs. The day after they came another one burned out!

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The ten year guarantee usually specifies how many hours a day the lights are used. The store brand LED bulbs from Ace Hardware have "10 year rated average based on engineering testing and probability analysis were the lamp is used on average 3 hours/day, 7 days a week." In my home they start to fail in about 2.5 years, although with longer daily use.

DREW WILEY said:

CFL's can be even worse. Terrible on the eyes, rated for 7 yrs, and you're lucky to get a month out of them. Basically a scam. . . .

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I agree. However, I've had some last for a few years of continuous years. For long life, an incandescent lamp operated far below its rated voltage might not be efficient, but it may also last for many years. My usual usage for this is 40 and 60 Watt lamps wired in series. The 60 Watt lamp barely glows, while the 40 Watt lamp emits enough light for many uses.

I also have some Phillips LED bulbs that I brought with us when we moved south. They seem to last much longer then the Cree.

As a guy entering LF for the 1st time (at 62 of all things!) and spending last night watching youtubes on loading film holders, I think there's a lot true here about the "artists" vs. the deadline driven pros. There used to be a category called "amateurs" but never mind. Whatever we call ourselves, we're doing it for the eyes first. "The eyes have it!"

My experience with so much in my comparatively short years after returning to photography as a hobby is that a lot of folks just don't really bother with the difficulties of learning the hybrid requirements. The assumption that digital / hybrid is easier.... may not be valid in the sense that it still requires acquisition of tools and skills that many will skip. As a hybridist, I'm content to let others judge the relative merits of inkjet vs. wet print... and even happy to let many tell me that wet printing is much better. Sure. No debate. But as it comes to me personally without the wet print skills, I think my remaining lifetime probably isn't long enough to get up to master printer type level I'd probably aspire to....'cause if there's a hard way to go, an ambitious way to go... I can't help myself... and I want to go there.

Resistance has its virtues, and we have to accept limitations somewhere. Be that as it may...

My real point in commenting here is that I've developed a lot of C41 and yes it saves money, and yes, I think Jobo processed C41 is pretty doggone good and not all that hard. Some suggest it's even easier than B&W... and y'know? I'd agree. MF / 120 developing saves a bundle. In B&W, self processing saves even more since commercial B&W tends to be lower volume and higher prices. And if I can learn it.... and acquire reasonably good results, ANYONE can. Ditto for digital printing.... though the real thing is that I think most folks (present company excepted) just don't 1) bother with printing, and 2) want to spend the time, paper and ink involved in learning to get good results... and repeating a print until they're really happy with it. No matter what folks in the Primaries say these days, Education / Experience costs something: Blood, Sweat & Tears... which was once upon a time, a really good band.

I find colour with large format is better than ever. I shoot 4x5 and develop the film myself. The cheap sous vide machines make that possible. I scan and print with a pigment ink jet. My colour work has never been better.

As large format has the movements lacking in all but the most expensive digital systems I get to have high resolution colour images with complete perspective and focus plane control for a fraction of digital cost. I really enjoy the pigment ink image quality and the wide selection of paper types.

Yeah, I still do a lot of black and white, and occasionally scan, but mostly print in the darkroom. I occasionally look at my old Kodak data book (circa 1970) with the paper samples and think how good it must have been to have that much choice.

People who shoot film, especially large formats, do not do so because it is easy or convenient, but because it brings them joy (even when it turns out to be crap). There is not a large market for Bentleys or Ferraris but they still make new ones and people buy used ones with the same enthusiasm and enjoy the driving. Sometimes the medium chosen brings a shift in perspective.

esearing said:

People who shoot film, especially large formats, do not do so because it is easy or convenient, but because it brings them joy (even when it turns out to be crap). There is not a large market for Bentleys or Ferraris but they still make new ones and people buy used ones with the same enthusiasm and enjoy the driving. Sometimes the medium chosen brings a shift in perspective.

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+1 Very good answer!