This Bodes Bad Things For Film & Papers

[jeffreyg]

Speaking of the cost of repairs I recently had a headlight of my 2021 suv go out. You can’t just replace a bulb on that model. You have to remove the bumper and replace an entire unit at a cost of $2300. Parts, labor, shop materials and sales tax. Speaking as a retired dentist, I never charged $500 for an amalgam or for a composite resin filling which has mostly replaced using amalgam for many years. Dental office overhead is more than the dentist nets and then you have to pay tax on that. Maybe you should encourage your children to become auto mechanics . The part was$850.

 

[DREW WILEY]

You found an auto part that cheap ???? I just paid $75 for a plastic door latch that couldn't have cost more than $1.50 to make. Hopefully, it won't break in two months like the last one did, due to being generically made out of brittle styrene plastic instead of correct polypropylene.

 

[jeffreyg]

Drew you are lucky it was only a latch. Gone are the days when a car was only for transportation. They have more "features" than anyone will ever use just like digital cameras. I have a point and shoot that fits in a pocket. The instruction pdf is right around 400 pages long. More fun to use my pinhole with no moving parts and the film is 4x5.

 

[DREW WILEY]

It wasn't just a latch. I just got my whole truck suspension replaced - $1700 in all, which was basically a bargain for competent work. My truck is 30 yrs old; but all the maintenance expenses on it so far, added up, are still less than just the sales tax and registration fee on a comparable new 4WD pickup! Plus I enjoy stick shift, which can't be obtained anymore, while I utterly hate these new vehicles with their dashboards resembling airplane cockpits, overloaded with distracting electronic displays - just more unnecessary stuff to go wrong, making one dependent on lucrative dealership diagnostic equipment service.

When my wife was working in plastic surgery, she was tasked with, among other things, before and after digital documentation. They gave her the necessary DLSR; but I had to read through the whole damn 250 pg manual just to figure out which buttons and programs had to be turned off before she could use it predictably and without further fuss in the operating room, all the while stitching someone up.

I only own a DLSR for sake of copy stand use, and have dumbed that down to only a single set of functions, although I could resurrect it for general photographic use if I wanted to. I'm a lot more interested in sheet film; and there's nothing battery-dependent about that except for the handheld light meter.