Ilford FP4 4x5 price increase...

[pentaxuser]

In the suburban Washington DC are back in the 60's people would ask questions at EJ Korvettes where I sold cameras and then drive 30 or 40 miles to save $2 on a $150 camera.

Was this the result of maths or math teaching being very inadequate in Washington

pentaxuser

 

[Sirius Glass]

Was this the result of maths or math teaching being very inadequate in Washington

pentaxuser

The innate inability to engage ones brain. A common affliction worldwide. However today it is Washington's Specialty!

 

[BradS]

Reminds me of a guy I know who'll drive 20miles out of his way in his SUV that gets maybe 20MPG holds at most 16 gallons to "save" 5 cents a gallon...

 

[DREW WILEY]

When I was about 21 I briefly worked in a hardware store in San Francisco. It wasn't that unusual for a particular lady to come in and chew us out for overcharging a dime for two cabinets knobs. So she'd spend 2 or 3 hours more and pay the fare across the Golden Gate bridge to buy the two knobs cheaper in Marin County. Then the next day she'd come back in with her receipt and wave it at us, as if she were the Empress of price wars. It would have been easy just to tell her to get lost, but she provided some necessary comic relief to those long hours. I vaguely remember that she was the same lady that requested a power jigsaw that matched the color of her shoes.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

In the suburban Washington DC are back in the 60's people would ask questions at EJ Korvettes where I sold cameras and then drive 30 or 40 miles to save $2 on a $150 camera.

I worked for your competitor, S. Klein, starting in the late 60s (from high school through most of engineering college). Was a cashier all over that store, but being assigned to the camera department provided most fun. And not just because of the "Magicube fights."

Trivia: the E.J. Korvettes chain was started by eleven Jewish Korean veterans, thus its name.

 

[jvo]

Yes, the magical process that makes ILFORD film less expensive once it has crossed the Atlantic ocean.

it is same magical process pharmaceutical companies use to send the drugs from u.s to other countries! ah, capitalism, it is beyond us mere consumers to comprehend!

 

[warden]

Trivia: the E.J. Korvettes chain was started by eleven Jewish Korean veterans, thus its name.

Cool!

 

[Sal Santamaura]

...Trivia: the E.J. Korvettes chain was started by eleven Jewish Korean veterans, thus its name.

Cool!

To preclude any potential confusion, those founders were Jewish U.S. military veterans of this country's Korean police action / war, not American Jews of Korean ancestry.

 

[Sirius Glass]

I worked for your competitor, S. Klein, starting in the late 60s (from high school through most of engineering college). Was a cashier all over that store, but being assigned to the camera department provided most fun. And not just because of the "Magicube fights."

Trivia: the E.J. Korvettes chain was started by eleven Jewish Korean veterans, thus its name.

"Magicube fights"?

 

[MattKing]

"Magicube fights"?

Much more dangerous than Flashcube fights!

 

[Sal Santamaura]

"Magicube fights"?

Unlike conventional flash bulbs/cubes, which used cameras' battery power to set them off, Magicubes were fired by cameras releasing a spring-loaded flint-striking mechanism built into the cubes. Therefore, if crazy young employees opened packages of Magicubes and started throwing them around, hard surfaces would set off anywhere from one to four flashes upon impact. It made for wild "firefights" in the stockroom, out of customers' (and managers') view.

 

[Sirius Glass]

Unlike conventional flash bulbs/cubes, which used cameras' battery power to set them off, Magicubes were fired by cameras releasing a spring-loaded flint-striking mechanism built into the cubes. Therefore, if crazy young employees opened packages of Magicubes and started throwing them around, hard surfaces would set off anywhere from one to four flashes upon impact. It made for wild "firefights" in the stockroom, out of customers' (and managers') view.

Oh those lost opportunities of youth!

 

[Mackinaw]

.....Trivia: the E.J. Korvettes chain was started by eleven Jewish Korean veterans, thus its name.

Not true. EJ Korvettes was started in 1948 by a WW2 vet, Eugene Ferkauf, and his friend, Joe Zwillenberg. Korvettes was a take-off on the naval term "corvette" a sub-destroying destroyer.

Jim B.

 

[Adrian Bacon]

We understand the price of everything, and the value of almost nothing.

That's the truth.

In the suburban Washington DC are back in the 60's people would ask questions at EJ Korvettes where I sold cameras and then drive 30 or 40 miles to save $2 on a $150 camera.

I expect some percentage of people to do that. Heck, my mom spends half a day driving around town to save a couple bucks, even though she really didn't because she burned half a tank of gas to do it.

 

[dynachrome]

When I bought a 4X5 camera two years ago I looked for some b&w film. I wound up with a 25 sheet box of FP-4+, which was the most reasonably priced film of its type. Price differences exist for a variety of reasons. I remember when Kodak abruptly raised the price for 100 foot rolls of Tri-X. The price eventually came down.

My school summers were spent working in the Camera Barn stores in NY. The Polaroid SX-70 film packs had a flat battery built in. Where shelf life was concerned, the battery would not last as long as the film. If the battery in a pack died, the film would not eject from the camera. At the same time, if someone used up a fresh pack quickly, the battery would still have plenty of power in it. When customers left us their used packs, we would remove the batteries and hold paper clips on the terminals. This would be used to pop off flash bulbs. Some of the bulbs were pretty large so we had to be a little careful. There were rubber band fights too. We were young.

I grew up in The Bronx and we had a Korvettes nearby in Pelham Manor. If I ran out of D-76 or fixer, they had i . I still have a black plastic Yankee tank with a stainless steel reel which I bought in the early 1970s at the Alexanders store at 59th Street in Manhatten. Department stores have not sold these kinds of photo items for a long time. It is not realistic for small camera/photo stores to sell 4X5 film. My local camera store runs C-41 and still prints on RA-4 paper. They do great work. If I need things they don't sell I can get them by mail or drive up to Unique Photo in Fairfield, NJ.

 

[Sal Santamaura]

...Trivia: the E.J. Korvettes chain was started by eleven Jewish Korean veterans, thus its name.

Not true. EJ Korvettes was started in 1948 by a WW2 vet, Eugene Ferkauf, and his friend, Joe Zwillenberg. Korvettes was a take-off on the naval term "corvette" a sub-destroying destroyer...

I stand corrected.

What I related in #55 was common "knowledge" a half century ago, when there was no Snopes or Wikipedia to check for validation. Researching it further before posting hadn't occurred to me. Live and learn.

 

[Terrence Brennan]

I sold cameras for Eaton's in Montreal in 1974-75 (for our non-Canadian APUGers, Eaton's was a large Canadian department store chain which sold pretty much everything you can imagine).

We never got into flashbulb or Magicube fights, but when things got slow, one of the women I worked with with go into the nearby hat department and model some of the hats; I would grab a camera (usually a Nikon FTn, my then-dream camera) and shoot a roll of Tri-X. If none of the women in our department were working that day, we could always raid the candy counter!!