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best online camera store?

Here in Utah, we once had several great camera stores. We helped each other and if it meant sending a customer to a competitor, so be it.

The salespeople worked in darkrooms, sold fine equipment, or taught photography and printing. Ecker's was a fine portrait studio as well. Our store was located a block from Ecker's, a fine, old shop filled with smart photographers. After we closed, Wasatch started up and they had some smart people at the time. Now, Phffffft!

If the Internet was around at the time, we would have been a known name in the business. I know this is true because I would be running the site and I always know what is best or how to do it. Smiley! I should offer mail-order black and white printing services.

I worked for one of the oldest commercial photographic firms and dealers in Utah. When we went away, that was the end of photographic knowledge in Utah. No BS, just a simple fact. At least as far as camera stores and film/paper were concerned. We had vast stocks of brand spanking new cameras discontinued in the late forties for sale.

I have looked for good shops but every last one of them is digital-centric and they do not stock much. What they advertise they generally do not stock; what they stock, they generally do not understand or use and what they use is the digital versions, seldom film, because most think digital can equal film. Phffft. Smiley!

There has to be a few good places on the web to go to for equipment. Good luck finding a great store. I have tried a few of the well-known sites and I am amazed at just how much people that sell equipment do not know about photography in general, working in a darkroom, or photographic history. I spoke to the darkroom expert for one well-known site and the guy I talked to said he has never once flipped on a safeligh and slopped an exposed sheet of Kodabromide through a tray of Dektol; he did not know Kodachrome was once available in a dozen or so sizes. He thought I was a fool and my cash went somewhere else.

Sorry, darkroom and obsolete film references. Not expecting four buck an hour salespeople to know what they should know.

At least you digital people have Photoshop and when you get it wrong, you can create a flabillion different versions until you get lucky and get it right. Smiley!

When you find one, post a link.
 
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