Has SK Grimes gone batty?

[kjsphoto]

honesty I think they are cheap for what they offer. Try going to a machine shop and have them work on one part for you. It will cost more than $100 bucks.

You want quality goto SK Grimes. You want crap, go elsewhere and do complain when it breaks.

 

[wfwhitaker]

What I don't understand is why photographers expect the public to pay hundreds of dollars of their hard-earned money for a print. I mean, anyone with a camera can do the same thing.

 

[Shawn Dougherty]

What I don't understand is why photographers expect the public to pay hundreds of dollars of their hard-earned money for a print. I mean, anyone with a camera can do the same thing.

good point....

 

[kjsphoto]

What I don't understand is why photographers expect the public to pay hundreds of dollars of their hard-earned money for a print. I mean, anyone with a camera can do the same thing.

This is why I started painting again...

 

[Michael Kadillak]

Mike- I wasn't asking anything special for the turnaround time- that never even entered into the discussion. I called two other shops first, both of whose answers were "I can sell you the lensboard, but I'll send it to Grimes to have it cut". I found a third answer which was "We'll do it here on our drill press and only charge you for the board, the hole is free". I went with option #3. I should have my lensboards next week sometime. I do have a drill press myself, but I'm not a terribly skilled operator, and if I dork up a lensboard in the process of drilling the hole, I'll have to buy another lensboard. If they dork it up, they have to eat that cost. That's worth it to me to have someone else do it.

Grimes fills a unique niche in the business that we all nead. Professional shop time costs "X" dollars. If you ever need a lens mounted you will appreciate the work that Grimes does. But every consumer needs to make the decision as to what does and does not work and accepts a series of causes and effects that come with this decision. I choked on what it cost to have my lenses cammed from Marflex for my Master Technika and when I checked the alternatives and the problems that I could have I opted for the more expensive deal. Obviously lens boards are not in that domain but sooner or later we as photographers get caught between a rock and a hard place and I am only saying that being frugle is not always an option.

Cheers!

 

[kjsphoto]

Being frugle has no place in photography. I have lenses that cost thousands of dollars, LF cameras that cost thousands and to complain over $100,200 or 300 is a joke in the scheme of things. I am not rich but I am damn sure that when I need work done I will pay the price regardless as I want quality and I wan tit don't right the first time.

This is one thing I cannot figure out with photographers. They will pay hundreds of dollars for film holders, a thousand on a lens and even more on camera but when it comes to accessories for their cameras they complain and moan. I just do not get it. Then they say they are not rich, then I reply, don't use it then, go to a smaller format.

I blame the walmarts by killing off all the mom and pop shops and importing cheap products and poor quality as being the norm. then when you have a place like SK Grimes that offers a quality product and a extremely reasonable price they complain and moan saying man they are expensive, when in reality they are not, people just get used to the walmarts of cheap product that need replaced every year.

You get what you pay for and these days you don't get much as it always breaks.

I will continue to pick quality over cheap every time. I may pay more now but in the long run I pay less as I will have it for a lifetime.

 

[Roger Hicks]

This is one thing I cannot figure out with photographers. They will pay hundreds of dollars for film holders, a thousand on a lens and even more on camera...

...and shoot outdated film.

 

[jd callow]

outdated film can be lovely. It probably is not so good for commissioned work or once in a lifetime shots. Out dated b/w film has to be pretty old and abused to be no good, colour neg film isn't far behind, and od transparencies can do great things crosssprocesed if the dmax has slipped. I’m more confused by folks who spend huge amounts of money on a great lens and then use it at f/32 or higher for the purpose of making negs for contact prints.

SKG charged me a small fortune for a retaining ring and for drilling a hole in a speed graphic lens board for a heliar. I paid more for the skg work than I did for the lens. The sad part is the lens is too heavy for the camera. Between the weight of the lens and the smack of the fp shutter everything is kind of swirly and out of focus. The work they did was great, my planning was not on par.

 

[Struan Gray]

I am glad S.K. Grimes charges a lot of money to drill a hole in a lensboard. My local machine shops have prices even more eye-watering for making simple holes in sheet metal, because it's not a job they want to do. As Micheal K. said, it's "Go away pricing" and means they are available for more interesting and difficult work where their particular skills are truly needed.

I bought a flange from Grimes once, it cost double the price of the lens. But I needed to get the lens mounted quickly, and was trying to squeeze a big rear thread onto a Technika board. With Grimes I could simply ask "If I tap the lensboard and file off the projecting bits of the rim, will the flange fit without compromising the light trap" and not only get an answer, but trust it. That was worth paying for.

 

[Ole]

Most of the time I make my own holes with a manual drill (muscle-powered), a hole saw, and then finish it off with a file.

But I'm really glad there is someone like SK Grimes - where else can you get lens boards for a Carbon Infinity made and drilled to specification?

If I need a different hole size in those I'll order a new one rather than attack one with drill and file.
Speed Graphic boards are a different matter - at least for my old Anniversary model.

 

[Curt]

Yes they are too high but apparently they have figured out that high prices keep the work load down and the profits up. When I started Art Center I was directed to the machine room for drilling and mounting my lens on a lens board. They charged a few dollars and did a professional job. Now I have a shop at home and have mounted quite a few lenses and made quite a few lens boards in aluminum and wood and have to say that there is no reason to charge large fees to make a board or drill one hole.

It's like going to a restaurant and ordering a slice of toast and finding out it will cost $100.00 because the slice has to be milled out of the loaf with a special machine and the butter has to be applied evenly to the surface with a special tool used just for that job.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Surely it's more like having your handkerchiefs tailor-made in Savile Row?

Or, on a related point, like a dentist friend of my father's who wanted more time off and doubled his prices. He had to double them again after a year in order to reduce the number of customers below the number he had before he doubled them.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Noah Schwartz, a machinist who used to work for Marty Forscher in New York (Professional Camera Repair--the best shop in the business for many years), posted on photo.net a while back that a properly machined lensboard hole should also have a recess for the retaining ring, and I think he incorporates some relief on the front for the levers on the back of the shutter, so it's not always just a hole. Here are some of his lensboards--

http://photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=569861

I don't own any of these myself, and the diamondplate seems like a bit of a gimmick, but they do look to be very well made, and checking completed auctions on eBay, he sells recessed Sinar boards with a Copal 0 hole made this way for $60.

When Steve Grimes was alive, drilling a lensboard was $15-25, plus a bit more for mounting a flange if necessary.

 

[TracyStorer]

NOT Batty

$60 for the board, drilled, does NOT seem off the wall to me, especially considering that SKG may not get dealer pricing. (that's 14 cents on the dollar for stocking a board for you)
How much do we save but not shipping the board all over the country multiple times?

$40 for your $35 board and $20 to drill it = $60.

Plus, they know to ask things like, "Centered on the board or centered on the film?" when you're ordering for a Technica.

 

[TracyStorer]

To clarify my mixed up post:
$35 marked up to $40 = 14 cents on the dollar, or spend a thousand to earn $140.
I am really glad that Adam and Co. are continuing Steve's business.

 

[eclarke]

Jeez, this is a hole in a flat piece of thin aluminum. It almost does not qualify as a machining job. I do it on a cnc mill to .0001" tolerances and the cycle time is about 45 seconds. These people are just nuts..Evan Clarke

 

[freygr]

Jeez, this is a hole in a flat piece of thin aluminum. It almost does not qualify as a machining job. I do it on a cnc mill to .0001" tolerances and the cycle time is about 45 seconds. These people are just nuts..Evan Clarke

Do you have to pay the CNC operator, fire, health and liability insurance, taxes federal, state and local, and rent? These are all hidden costs, for us part time craft men with a day job, we don't think about it.

 

[eclarke]

I am the operator, I pay the insurance, the taxes, the rent, all these things and have been for 26 years. This kind of price is nuts...EC

 

[highpeak]

The price is on the high side for the "hole" job, but again, it's SK, they provide the best service.

 

[Harrigan]

Noah Schwartz, a machinist who used to work for Marty Forscher in New York (Professional Camera Repair--the best shop in the business for many years), posted on photo.net a while back that a properly machined lensboard hole should also have a recess for the retaining ring, and I think he incorporates some relief on the front for the levers on the back of the shutter, so it's not always just a hole. Here are some of his lensboards--

http://photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=569861

I don't own any of these myself, and the diamondplate seems like a bit of a gimmick, but they do look to be very well made, and checking completed auctions on eBay, he sells recessed Sinar boards with a Copal 0 hole made this way for $60.

When Steve Grimes was alive, drilling a lensboard was $15-25, plus a bit more for mounting a flange if necessary.

David is right a proper lens board hole is not just a hole but also a recess for the retaining ring. Without the recess you take the risk of the rear lens not threading in all the way and goofing up your spacing as the rear lens barrel can be blocked by the retaining ring if it sits too high. Believe me it can and does happen, I have seen it.

Anyway the recess is very simple to do and I do it on my wood lathe on wood and aluminum boards. However the recess is normally not required on the thin linhof technika boards but it is for sinar boards and practically all wood boards.

 

[jd callow]

Noah Schwartz, a machinist who used to work for Marty Forscher in New York (Professional Camera Repair--the best shop in the business for many years), posted on photo.net a while back that a properly machined lensboard hole should also have a recess for the retaining ring, and I think he incorporates some relief on the front for the levers on the back of the shutter, so it's not always just a hole. Here are some of his lensboards--

http://photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=569861

I don't own any of these myself, and the diamondplate seems like a bit of a gimmick, but they do look to be very well made, and checking completed auctions on eBay, he sells recessed Sinar boards with a Copal 0 hole made this way for $60.

When Steve Grimes was alive, drilling a lensboard was $15-25, plus a bit more for mounting a flange if necessary.

A recessed sinar lensboard makes no sense. I can back the rear element right up to the ground glass on a flat lensboard.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

A recessed sinar lensboard makes no sense. I can back the rear element right up to the ground glass on a flat lensboard.

Might not make sense on a Sinar, but it could on other cameras that use Sinar-size lensboards, such as Phillips.

 

[jd callow]

good point.

 

[Dave_B]

SK Grimes

Folks:
My experience with SK Grimes has always been a positive one. Not the cheapest around but always first rate work and always quite fair value for the quality. At the end of it, I always have no regrets, unlike some other places I have dealt with.
Something to think about is that sometimes a specialized business will price low end services to NOT get the work. For a business with enough high value work to stay busy, things that are low value that chew up expensive staff hours and specialized machinery that can stay busy with the higher quality work, it makes sense to price it to have it go elsewhere. A group of folks who can stay busy mounting lenses in shutters and making special lens adapters may not care much about drilling lensboards. They may offer it to their customers because they are a full service shop but drilling lensboards may not be how they plan to pay the rent. They may not care if there are low end machine shops that can do simple jobs less expensively. They don't price it to compete with the low end providers. They price it to be comparable with what else they could be doing with their time providng high value services. If you take your watch to Tiffany's to change a battery, they will do it but it will cost you an arm and a leg because they would rather focus on higher value services and products.
Good luck,
Dave B.

 

[seawolf66]

At the moment I have a Lens board out to have a lens flange remounted on a Linhof board for my Tech III cost is $45.00 with postage : I'll advise how good of job thats done!