What happened to APUG?

[mtjade2007]

I have not visited APUG for a few months until today. APUG is completely different now. I spent a good 15 minutes, if not 25, to look for all the forums so hard that I almost gave up before I started to click everywhere to find a clue and an announcement whatever that points me to the forums. Why are the entrance to the forums are hidden this way? I click at the FORUM tab at the top but it pointed me to nowhere. Am I stupid or am I not alone?

Although I found this forum but not with some frustration. I think APUG really screwed up. I don't think this change makes APUG better. For newbies I don't think they will find the forum entrance before giving up.

Oh, well. I was going to say how I feel about film sales on eBay. I found much fewer interesting deals on eBay than ever before. There seems to be very few good film offers there. For example I almost found no Fuji Velvia 50 there. There are only a few Kodak Potra film offers too. This may be good for fresh film dealers but could be bad for film shooters. There may be fewer film shooters as a result. If cheap film source dries up some people finds it a good reason to switch to digital.

I feel APUG has totally screwed up.

 

[ghostcount]

Sorry to hear you're frustrated but works fine with me - nothing to complain about and I'm a scuscriber.

 

[picker77]

I click at the FORUM tab at the top but it pointed me to nowhere.

That's odd. When I click on the FORUM tab it takes me to the main list of all forums. I personally like the way APUG is set up, wish other forums would copy it.

 

[Andrew Moxom]

Welcome.... I do have to ask. What has E'Bay film sales got to with anything film market wise? It usually is people trying to sell old outdated film no longer made for a profit, and likely has no bearing on overall film usage. Most people on this site go to trusted vendors that support film at decent prices and also happen to support this website.... ie Freestyle, Ilford, Calumet etc etc.

 

[Sean]

I have not visited APUG for a few months until today. APUG is completely different now. I spent a good 15 minutes, if not 25, to look for all the forums so hard that I almost gave up before I started to click everywhere to find a clue and an announcement whatever that points me to the forums. Why are the entrance to the forums are hidden this way? I click at the FORUM tab at the top but it pointed me to nowhere. Am I stupid or am I not alone?

Although I found this forum but not with some frustration. I think APUG really screwed up. I don't think this change makes APUG better. For newbies I don't think they will find the forum entrance before giving up.

Oh, well. I was going to say how I feel about film sales on eBay. I found much fewer interesting deals on eBay than ever before. There seems to be very few good film offers there. For example I almost found no Fuji Velvia 50 there. There are only a few Kodak Potra film offers too. This may be good for fresh film dealers but could be bad for film shooters. There may be fewer film shooters as a result. If cheap film source dries up some people finds it a good reason to switch to digital.

I feel APUG has totally screwed up.

It is possible you are running an ancient web browser that can't display main parts of the site. We are somewhat compatible for browsers up to 10ys old but if you start to dip below that (Windows 98) or other old systems you will definitely have issues. What system are you running? The Forum link in the main menu bar goes straight to all forums, maybe you were also using an old bookmark to get to APUG? The site had to be upgraded for many reasons, it is not good to run old forum software in my opinion. So far directly after the upgrades we experienced growth on a scale we have not seen before, so it seems to have been an ok thing for us. Provide some more info, happy to help you get back on track.

Thanks,
Sean

 

[keithwms]

Everything works beautifully for me... many thanks to Sean for working to preserve all of what's best about APUG, through several necessary upgrades.

 

[mtjade2007]

I found out that it was my old browser that did not work. I changed to the latest Firefox then click on the FORUM tab. Everything is as usual. I never bothered to update my browser that was used for viewing APUG and some other stuff. Now I have to throw it away. Sorry about it.

It may or may not have anything to do with the current film market. EBay used to have a lot more offerings of varieties of excellent films expired and non expired. There were plenty of buyers so it kept those sellers selling the films. If there are only very few of them today I wonder if it is because there are fewer buyers. If yes this sure means something to the film market, doesn't it?

It's not just outdated films being sold there. There are (were) in date films, lots of them, too.

 

[mtjade2007]

Thanks, Sean. It is indeed my old browser that caused the problem. Should have thrown it out long time ago. No more Netscape!!!

 

[michaelbsc]

Netscape is gone?

 

[wblynch]

This is good because the film producers have to keep selling fresh film in order to remain in business.

I would like to continue using film for the next few decades so I want the manufacturers to be healthy.

 

[boswald]

I'm using Camino, part of the Mozilla Project, the free open code that was originally made by Netscape.

 

[kevs]

I'm using SeaMonkey 1.1.18 (an evolution of the Netscape / Mozilla browsers) with images (mostly) off, on Win XP, and APUG looks fine to me; no problems.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

I just tried browsing APUG in Lynx, and I couldn't even get past accepting the cookies.

 

[removed account4]

i have to keep feeding my hamster elon or i don't have enough juice
to get past log in area. ( im on hampscape 2.02 ) all the tabs are messed up,
none of the pull down menus work and i am running out of elon.

 

[nickrapak]

Yeah, but stay away from Guinea Pig 3.7. I hear that it's a bloated with too many features, and a real memory hog.

 

[removed account4]

not to mention they eat all the cookies !

 

[Paul Sorensen]

As to the issue of film on eBay, there was a time, seems like it was about 3 to 5 years ago, when eBay seemed awash in outdated film and prices were really low. I got a batch of over 400 sheets of fairly fresh and very usable Ilford and Kodak 4X5 film for about $100. It seems that the initial rush of outdated product due to over production and folks stopping the use of film and selling their stocks has pretty much dried up and the real deals are gone. I can see how this could discourage price sensitive folks who were shooting film on the cheap because of all of this product flooding the marketplace, but it was certainly not sustainable. Hopefully there is a good balance to be found of a price point where folks who are not wealthy can afford to use film and film companies can sell enough of it to stay in business. It is not clear where that price point is yet, hopefully it won't be too bad.

 

[mwelsh]

I've been shooting film for a year now and I only buy it from my local stores or order it from other places that sell film. I haven't bought any film from ebay and don't plan on it either. I like to know my film is not expired. As an aside I just processed a roll of acros 100 and I liked it a lot. I used D76 now that I have the bugs worked out of it.

 

[guitstik]

I used to use gerbil 3.7 but it kept causing problems with my mouse.

 

[holmburgers]

I've noticed the eBay thing too, but as Paul S. says, c'est la vie. It's called a bubble, and it burst. It's good for film manufacturers and ultimately that's good for us.

Side note: the best place to find outdated film is on APUG!

Dude, you totally screwed up that net browser thing...

 

[Ric Trexell]

People might be using CL.

Another reason that film is drying up on ebay is that more people might be using Craigslist. I bought some 35mm film there from a local photographer, but 120 film is hard to find. Even on CL there is a drop in film availability. The last 120 film I bought I had to buy some 35mm black and white to go with it. I did however find some ten rolls of slide film that was worth buying. Now I mainly see used digital cameras for sale on ebay. Why would anyone want to sell a digital camera? After all you can put pictures on your computer, your TV and you can email...ya ya ya. Ric.

 

[accozzaglia]

I guess Netscape finally lost their last customer.

Best quote of the month, no contest.

 

[Eric Rose]

OMG, Lynx is still being developed! Wow that's a blast from the past.

 

[mtjade2007]

Ebay is a good place to look for all varieties of films. There are always limited choices from local stores. Besides, you will have plenty of time to select and buy. There were always lots of options. It gave me an easy access to films that I wanted to try. If it were not eBay I would not have shot so many different films. There are films that you can't buy from stores. I have a school portrait camera (Camerz) that uses 46mm long roll films. I was able to get quite a few 100ft rolls from eBay. The Camerz camera is an excellent studio portrait camera. It produces 645 sized negatives for me. I cut and process the film in my Jobo ATL processor with great results.

I have more than one Yahoo email addresses. One is of course the main one that I use to communicate with all my friends.The other is for forums, mailing lists and Yahoo Groups, etc. This is the reason I still use Netscape. I can see my normal mailbox on Firefox and the 2nd mailbox on Netscape at the same time without having to log out from one in order to to log in the other. I actually don't like Yahoo. But I can't toss my email addresses like tossing a pair of old socks. They have been with me for more than a decade. Netscape let me see my 2nd Yahoo mailbox concurrently. I know, people laughed why still use Netscape. I did use it to browse APUG. I also use latest Firefox at the same time.

 

[mtjade2007]

I have probably more than a hundred Konica Minolta 220 400 speed negative rolls in my freezer. A dealer from Los Angeles unloaded his fresh inventories on eBay about 2-4 years ago. They are not available any more. I actually like this film. If it were not eBay I would probably never have run into one roll to try.