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.

 

[Terrence Brennan]

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.

Amen to that!

About seven years ago I used a borrowed DSLR kit to photograph my granddaughter’s wedding. It came with a 240 page manual.

In my day job, I used the same model camera, which when in a studio environment, was easy to use and to get the required results. In the field it’s a different matter.

My granddaughter and her husband wanted digital photography, otherwise I would have been much more comfortable with my 1953 Rolleiflex and Metz flash! And black and white film, although I admit I would have added some water to my wine and loaded the camera with colour negative film, upon request.

My wife and I own a 2025 Toyota Corolla, our third one! This one has a dashboard and control system that would make Captain Kirk envious! Far too many buttons!

 

[DREW WILEY]

Yeah, I once worked for an outfit selling all kinds of tools and fasteners to car dealers. They made most of their profit on "service", and not on new auto sales per se. We regularly dealt with over 50 dealers, and considered only one of those as honest. That was a long time ago; but nothing has changed in that respect. If anything, it's gotten worse due to all the dependency on electronics. They've really go you over a barrel on that one. And that's what their mechanics are taught to do - each specializes in just this or that,
in relation to just their own models of cars; and a lot of it pertains to diagnostic switching out parts.

We don't take our own cars to dealerships for service, but to a trusted friend with an actual engineering background. He had a high income and liked fine cars, but couldn't find anyone he could trust to competently fix his own vehicles - so he learned the ropes himself, and pretty soon his co-workers were taking their BMW's and Benzes, and Toyotas to him, and he discovered he was making more money at that than his daytime engineering job, even though charging way less than dealerships, so he made it a full time pursuit.

Most digital cameras seem to be in a different category in that respect - people view them as expendable,
just like their cell phones which get regularly replaced when something newer comes out. Maintenance,
other than cleaning and battery replacement, seems to be a distant issue to them.

I'm entirely capable of making potential view camera repairs myself (other than lenses and shutters);
and have even done most of my own Medium Format RF and SLR fixes, since I've religiously avoided any automated bells n' whistles in that category too, and even in my choice of 35mm cameras.

In other words, I'm completely married to film and darkroom paper, until "death do us part", one way or the other.

 

[Dr. no]

That's like calculating the cost of a new car bumper according to the amount of raw unprocessed chrome that goes into the plating. Then you also have to factor that bumpers are produced thousands at a time, or not at all, and all of that involves a lot of expensive machinery plus wages.

And because you only scan your shots, you might not be aware of how silver based print papers have themselves risen dramatically in price in recent years, and it's unlikely to get better.

The last time I priced getting a bumper rechromed, they asked what vehicle it was for (1968 Karmann Ghia) and priced it to compete with the market for replacement. if it had been a mass market domestic car it would have been far cheaper. When I pointed this out he shrugged and said ”send it somewhere else”. They all did that.

Labor and materials are often on a small part of the formula, especially in a specialty market.

 

[chuckroast]

The last time I priced getting a bumper rechromed, they asked what vehicle it was for (1968 Karmann Ghia) and priced it to compete with the market for replacement. if it had been a mass market domestic car it would have been far cheaper. When I pointed this out he shrugged and said ”send it somewhere else”. They all did that.

Labor and materials are often on a small part of the formula, especially in a specialty market.

The price of pretty much everything is only somewhat correlated to the materials and labor cost to produce. The more dominant factor is the supply relative to the demand. That's why F1 drivers make millions - the supply of people able to do that work is infinitesimally small and thus they command stratospheric prices (pay). I, OTOH, have never been offered a position on one of those teams because there is literally no demand for my nonexistent racing skills