Reichmann must have a plant here in the audience. Every thirty days or so, the alarm goes off, and this plant has to stand up and (re)ask this same question again. Set your watch, I guarantee you in thirty days it'll happen again.
From real life.
Yesterday stopped at Samy's on Fairfax to pick up two repaired strobe heads. I wish I'd of carried on of those flip video things and taped it, from parking lot to back because it's interesting.
At first there is the rental counter. 45 art center and Brook's grads, all grabbing up Canons, Nikons and a few 7b's to do their big test on the weekend, cause weekend rental is counted as one day.
They all have that wide eyed look, almost happy almost scared like a kid before he goes onto the roller coaster. He wants to do it more than he wants to breath, but you can just feel that thought of "damn I hope I don't puke and embarress myself." There is a line of them dragging the rentals out and trying to stuff them in their Audi's and BMW 3 series. Kind of funny to see kids with $45,000 cars, but it is LA and they did go to Art Center.
Then up to the camera department and on the left is the Leica guy, I kid you not the guy with the blue sweater on his shoulders in the you tube videos. He's all by himself, not a customer within 50 feet, standing in front of these little red boxes with a camera on top of each one. An M-8, M-9 and some little bitty camera that looks cell phone size. These boxes are kind of Cartier looking, except Samy's doesn't look like Cartier so it's kind of strange to see someone selling jewelry in a camera store.
I swear to the heavens he's still got a sweater on his shoulder, but this time it's bright orange, tasteful european orange, not wallmart ugly orange. Not an S-2 to be seen. Behind him is all this Leica stuff they use to make that Samy's must have pulled from stock. A brand new film R-9 with that dark titanium metal look and God that camera is beautiful. It takes everything I got not to buy that camera until I think oh, yea, that's a film camera and uh yea, it's manual focus and uh yea, it probably would take 6 weeks to get it fixed and when's the next time I'm gonna shoot 35mm film?
I ask him about the S-2 and he mentions some demo day in December, but I just kid of think huh, demo day, uh ok,
Then the Canon and Nikon counters are pretty full, mostly amateurs buying lenses and flash to go on their d700's and 5d's.
Now I round the corner to the "Pro" section where the medium format cameras are and there are 5 "customers" holding cameras, mostly Hasselblads. All have that big half guilty smile, like the wife is out of town and I'm gonna spend some serious money. If this was three years earlier they'd all be at the Porsche, Harley, or Ferrari dealership, but nobody that has to look respectable is gonna buy a $180,000 sports car today, not in LA, not with all the talk about global melting and the economy, not when every neighbor drives a Prius. So instead of a Carerra they're gonna buy a camera.
None are holding a Leaf, or a Phase, in fact the phase cameras are on the bottom of the case one of them on it's side. They all are holding those blads and I could be wrong but they don't look like photographers to me at least not professional photographers.
Guys that do what I do kind of look road weary, kind of beat up and these guys are a little pudgy, but have those clean hands and pink smooth cheeks like Dentists or Heart Surgeons. They don't look like Gordon Gecko types either (those guys are still buying the Ferraris), just nice happy rich guys that live in Brentwood.
I could take those guys into a studio and shoot a Canon next to the blad or the Phase and prove to them the difference is about 4%, or show them how to tether, rename, batch process, but they don't care cause they ain't gonna tether, rename, or batch process. They don't want a Canon cause none of their friends knows that a $7,000 Canon is not a $900 Canon, they want a Hasselblad.
Those guys believe in the 3d look.
Now I could take them into a studio or location with a real crew, a real model, (probably in Lingerie and not one of those camera company models) and with a briese light hand them that blad and say see, see, the 3d look, see how this "big" camera renders the image, or better yet "draws" the image and they'd go "yea, yea, man that's it".
These are believers and the wife is outta town.
BC