Is the film craze dead?

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Roger Cole

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Pieter12 said:
Except for new drugs that have no generics, you do have a bit of a choice when it comes to prescriptions and gasoline. Around here, you can go a few blocks and the price of a gallon of gas can be different by 75¢.
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You can also drive more fuel efficient vehicles and still get there. People drive these giant rolling house things that are so popular now then complain about the fuel costs. My Mazda 3 gets 28-35 MPG. Tank holds, IIRC, 12 gallons and I rarely put more than 10 in to fill up as I don't run it down to fumes. Currently $3.149 here in Georgia, though I realize it's a lot more in states with higher fuel tax. So $30-$35 to fill up, and go roughly 300 miles on that.
 

MattKing

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Don Heisz said:
Canadian health insurance covers medical bills - going to the doctor, getting tests, necessary procedures at a hospital. It does not cover any part of prescriptions.
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There are other government funded programs that cover many prescription costs for those with low incomes. They vary by Province.
And while you are hospitalized, drug costs are covered.
Many have private extended health insurance, some of which is supplied by employers, which can be customized to cover some or all prescription costs. Premiums for that insurance are a lot cheaper than what I understand people in the US pay in premiums. Those Canadian premiums also are partially tax deductible.
 

MattKing

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And in North America you can no longer buy a new Mazda 3 or just about any other new sub-compact, car, because of a combination of new car requirements and the low profit margins for cars like that.
There are all sorts of small cars in the European markets that just aren't sold here any more.
 

Roger Cole

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Whether they have any STOCK or not is another question. But it's still a current model, as are many others:

2025 Mazda 3 Sedan – Premium AWD Compact Car | Mazda USA

Check out the 2025 Mazda 3 sedan, with its dynamic accents, leather interior and 18 inch black alloy wheels on the Premium Plus edition.
www.mazdausa.com

2025 Mazda 3 Hatchback – Premium AWD Compact Car | Mazda USA

Check out the 2025 Mazda 3 hatchback, with its dynamic accents, leather interior and 18 inch black alloy wheels on the Premium Plus edition.
www.mazdausa.com

Fuel efficient vehicles are available.

EDIT: I checked the web site of the Mazda dealer where I bought mine in 2011. They have 11 hatchback Mazda 3s and 2 sedans in stock:

Mazda Digital Showroom Cars

New Mazda ["Mazda3 Hatchback", "Mazda3 Sedan"] inventory at Rick Case Mazda. Shop our new vehicles for sale in Duluth. Buy your next car 100% online and pick up in store at a Rick Case Mazda location or deliver your Mazda to your home. Finance or lease a new Mazda.
express.rickcasemazda.com

I don't know what the situation is like up there, but you can definitely buy small, fuel efficient cars here if you want one.
 

MattKing

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Sorry, for some reason I read Mazda 3 - a well regarded compact car - and posted about the Mazda 2 - one of several recently discontinued sub-compact cars.
And yes I know my post said Mazda 3 - I've corrected it now.
 

Roger Cole

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MattKing said:
Sorry, for some reason I read Mazda 3 - a well regarded compact car - and posted about the Mazda 2 - one of several recently discontinued sub-compact cars.
And yes I know my post said Mazda 3 - I've corrected it now.
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Ah got it. And yeah I remember the 2, but that was too small even for me, and I like small cars.
 

Huss

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My gf recently bought a Mazda 3. Basically because the Mazda dealer was the only one not adding a mark up. Really nice car and funny to think it is considered a small car because it is the size of a Bmw 5 series from 20 years ago.
 

Thomas71

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Given that I use exclusively medium format in bw, what I noticed that equipment's price start to stabilize. Many auctions selling iconic items (rolleiflexwith; leica M) with fixed high price are ending "unsold". Last week I bought a pristine Hassy Sonnar 150 for 200 eur in a physical shop here in Italy. On the other hand prices of chemicals and film are skyrockets high and i think they will never come down again. Reasonable prices are showed only by Ilford-Kentmere: 5 eur for Kentmere Pan 100 and 6,5 eur for FP4+; meaningless prices for Kodak tmax100 and Fuji AcrosII (around 16 eur)... 15 rolls of Tmax would cost more than a masterpiece glass as Sonnar 150....
I'd rather prefer to see higher prices in equipment and more affordable prices in "consumable"... at least to mitigate our GAS attitude and encourage to shoot more...
I
 

DREW WILEY

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My hand are small and sensitive, Don. But anecdotally, nail and staple guns were pretty much a manufacturing convenience, bulky and needing huge two-stage compressors. But as the two pioneering manufacturers of more realistic portability were beginning to scale things down, myself and another individual took the bull by the horns and turned a seeming oddity into a massive West Coast construction trend. And we were the first in the world to convert palm nailers to construction use, a full decade before anyone else. One of the regular customers was a well-known writer of a popular book about how to run a successful contracting company. Really nice guy. He'd hobble into the store miserable with bursitis in every joint in his body, and then openly declare that no "real carpenter" will ever buy a nail gun. Too late; we were already buying and selling those by the truckload, and had even begun our own energy-efficient portable compressor line. Later my nephew worked for him while attending the university, using, of course, nail guns. But the man himself never would touch one - couldn't do much work at all himself at that point. I have enough risk of bursitis if I carelessly lift a pack full of 8x10 gear on a cold day; don't need any more of it due to hand tools!

Of course, the first few months those framing guns were dispersed, I recall six carpenters crucifying themselves on 2X4's. Word soon got around that you have to be attentive where your other hand is!
 

Don_ih

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DREW WILEY said:
no "real carpenter" will ever buy a nail gun
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I've got 6 nail guns (framing to pin) and couple of staple guns. I remember looking at a palm nailer and thinking that was ripe for people who don't know how to use a hammer. Now they have battery-operated ones, so that's at least a little less stupid.
 

DREW WILEY

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All of em are now disposable toys. The first palm nailers were invented by a company called Danair, and the tool itself, Aerosmith out in our Central Valley farmlands. Dan was a large orchard fruit grower who employed local women to assemble fruit crates in their warehouse, and was seeking a better way to do that. Then he adapted the idea into a power mallet used to tap in windshield moulding. Our shop foreman put a big center punch on one for sake of screw indentations on metal door frames. We had a huge door and window business. Then the massive seismic retrofit era arrived, with the demand to do cripple wall and metal strap nailing in confined crawl spaces. Put two and two together, and we sold hundreds of them. Not silly at all, but a game-changer.

This was a high quality machine made of diecast parts, and with a periodic O-ring maintenance, could be kept going 20 or 30 years of hard use. The current import variety lasts about 6 months if equivalently used. I even had them make a customized nail punch for the flooring trade, which dramatically saved time, but never caught on like the framing and metal connector applications did. This is ground zero for proverbial Calif. earthquakes. I was talking to my sister on the phone yesterday right when she said something was shaking, which turned out to be a modest 4.5 event with its epicenter fairly close to where she lives.

I was also personally involved in every painful inch of going airless, either via fuel canister or battery, and was often the first persons to actually test prototypes in real-world applications. Great ideas got poorly executed manufacture-wise, leading to one bellyflop after another. We were a pro house, so rejected every unproven toy concept. Once I even handed the mfg sales rep his piezo hoseless finish gun back to him with a mallet cap attached to its top, implying the only real way to use it was upside-down like a regular hammer, along with an ad illustration of an ape-man cracking a nut with the thing. Times have changed. Now most choices are disposable and not worth repairing, with nobody left to repair them anyway. Reminds me of cellphones and consumer digi cameras. Nobody cares; no pride in manufacture anymore. Just outsource it.
 
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braxus

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I have noticed any expensive photo gear is going unsold these days. That includes a digital Ive had up for sale for months. Its a tough market today with how the economy is going, and people finding it hard to make ends meet. I also see a lot of high prices on 35mm and 120 format cameras also going unsold. I find the Japanese sellers over inflate their pricing for their cameras by 50 percent, and why I say that, is if you go to resell that same camera here, it will only sell for half of the value you paid for it from the Japanese seller. The Japanese sellers havent really begun to lower their prices yet, holding on for that one person who would still pay their high price. There are the occasional exception to that, like with the really popular cameras, but for the most part I feel Im correct in that assumption.
 
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UserDemos

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Long time lurker, first time poster. I've been in the market for some new equipment (Fuji GX680iii) for some time, so naturally I've been following it on eBay as well as other places. The overseas sellers are willing to negotiate on price, but it's maybe $50-75 max. Not enough for me to bite the bullet and I'm willing to wait until the right price comes around. I'm sure that one of these days, someone will start to lower their prices and everyone else will begin coming around.
 

pentaxuser

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I have no idea how to judge if the film craze is dead or not but what I can say with more conviction is that after 17 pages we on Photrio are as crazed as ever

pentaxuser
 
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