W Stephen Mott wrote: >I took your suggestion and compared Calumet's Essentials catalog to a B&H >ad. There is a 30-40 percent difference in price but I am wondering if we >are being blinded by this low price and need to be aware of something >else.
Depends upon what item you are buying. I have some 'direct import' Nikon equipment too, but 'grey' market is not the issue here with foreign film. Fuji transparency film is made in Japan, so there is no such thing as 'USA' Fuji slide film. If you are concerned about your film after you get your B&H order and are looking at the box, you can call Fuji and confirm that the batch number printed on the box was for USA export. All film must be shipped to some degree and the manufacturers know this. It does not just vaporize or melt like ice when it leaves the factory. Today's film is more stable that we think, and I am more concerned about manufacturing inconsistency than short term shipping. Long term storage would be another matter. (BTW, I have a boxed roll of 20 exposure Kodachrome 25 that expired in November of 1977. Should I shoot it just to see what it looks like?). I use most of my Fujichrome these days for critical studio use, not railfanning, and I have never had a problem with Fuji yet. And it scans and separates better with less prepress work for printing than the Kodak films that I have tried for this. My 'USA Rochester' Kodak E100 films process with some variations at the same E-6 lab that processes my Fujichrome flawlessly. I can't have those variations. They show up both before and after the film has left my hands and they make me look bad. Regardless of what goes wrong with a job, the photographer is always the first one blamed. You learn this real fast when you have customers. When I started shooting trains seriously 15 years ago as a hobby, none of these film concerns would have mattered had I known about them at the time, because back then it was all just for fun. And I've had some great times shooting trains, but I progressed in other directions photographically, and while I still enjoy shooting trains (and anything) for a hobby, now a bad commercial job could get me into big trouble missing a deadline and losing work, fired or stuck with some big out of pocket expenses that I can't bill anyone for. This is no longer fun then. This photographer trusts Fuji. Had I not had the business end of photography dumped in my lap, I may have still been shooting Kodachrome for my hobby. An intergral part of shooting Kodak film was to play the Kodak processing lottery by waiting to see if I 'win' good results with fresh USA Rochester Kodak products, or if my Kodak E-6 would come out the same again. No thanks. I'm happy now putting Jappanese film into my Jappanese cameras. And I still drive a Ford that was made in Kentucky. Have fun shooting. :) Dave Cohen Photographer [EMAIL PROTECTED] --> SPORRS: Serious Photographers of Railroad Related Subjects X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 Content-Length: 1077
