Actually, Bob, I beg to differ. Photography became big business. The money grubbers, like Ritz, bought the camera stores from the camera enthusiasts. The got rid of the interesting high-end stuff that did not sell fast, and replaced them with a minilab. They laid off the decently paid enthusiasts behind the counter and replaced them with minimum-wage off-the-street part-timer clerks. Now it is no longer a big bucks business, so the money grubbers are moving to something else. Only there are very few enthusiast stores left. Mail order took over a lot of that slack in the 80's and 90's, so there may never be new enthusiast shops.
We did not abandon the local shops, they abandoned us.
graywolf http://www.graywolfphoto.com "Idiot Proof" <==> "Expert Proof" -----------------------------------
Bob W wrote:
Hi,
To make things worse, people don't buy their cameras in a shop anymore. They come to the shop, look at the cameras, touch and feel and ask questions, then they say straight out that they will go home and order one from the net because it's alot cheaper.
People have been doing similar things for years. It's why the photography outlets changed from small, specialist places staffed by enthusiasts and experts who knew something about what they were doing, to warehouse-sized box-shifters who knew f*ck-all.
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Cheers,
Bob
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