Sales of new darkroom equipment to private buyers compared to institutional sales

[Nicholas Lindan]

Because of some socialist bias against private enterprise

????????????????? Is that a UK thing ??????????????????

[Tom Kershaw]

Nicholas,

Perhaps. There are some people who have a strange idea that nearly everything should be done by the state, and that almost any kind of private enterprise or capitalist operation is dubious, i.e. profit is bad thing. However, some milder manifestations of these attitudes have surfaced in the Kodachrome thread, that Kodak should continue to manufacture a product they can't sell enough off to be sustainable.

Tom.

[RH Designs]

I think it has more to do with teachers not understanding f-stop printing and/or being unwilling to change from the way they've always done it. I have sold a few units to schools but I could count them on probably just one hand.

[pentaxuser]

If my experience of Leamington College(U.K.) was anything to go by the equipment was fairly basic. This was down to a mixture of finance and the "need" to get students to do things "unaided" as in test strips etc to enable them to get through the curriculum of City and Guilds.

Classes were large( 20 students at a time) and I suspect that Leamington would have considered the return on supplying 20 Analyser Pros to 20 students plus tuition costs to leanr how to use to be insufficient. The courses were nice little earners for Leamington at the cost of bulk chems, 1 tutor and a few basic 35mm enlargers with Jessops lenses.

pentaxuser

[domaz]

Is it possible there is some obscure "other" use for enlargers we don't know about? Just because people are buying used enlargers doesn't mean they are actually using them for photography.

[MattKing]

Is it possible there is some obscure "other" use for enlargers we don't know about? Just because people are buying used enlargers doesn't mean they are actually using them for photography.

At present, my Omega D6 does double duty as a hallway ornament when not wheeled into the bathroom/darkroom for photographic purposes.

Matt

[Nicholas Lindan]

I think it has more to do with teachers ... being unwilling to change from the way they've always done it.

Ditto previous ditto.

Academe is quite reactionary. Educators believe what they themselves were taught as students to be revealed truth - reasonable enough, as educators expect their students, in turn, to have the same reverent belief in their own lectures.

New ideas are only accepted if they are the educator's own new ideas. If professors weren't required to do research universities would quickly revert to Dark-Ages monasteries.

Laboratory budgets are a lot tighter than they were, or so it seems. As university staff have become more money grubbing they realize that a dollar not spent on laboratory is a dollar available for salary increase. The time when educators, clergy and physicians earned little, and their vocation was a calling that was fulfilling in its own right, are over.

The best way to get f-stop techniques regarded as mainstream is to have them taught at the schools. The question is, how to get the techniques into the schools. I have lent units to schools. In one case the school couldn't even be bothered to unwrap the equipment.

Disclaimer: I speak from a very jaundiced viewpoint regarding education - having five university professors in my immediate family. I am the black-sheep exception.

[nsurit]

"But that is the way we've always done it"

As one who has had a business from the time I wasn't old enough to have one, my experience is that these are the most expensive words in the language. That goes for any business, organization or enterprise. Yes, any . . .

Bill Barber

[David Brown]

If professors weren't required to do research universities would quickly revert to Dark-Ages monasteries.

Nicholas, I agree with your point, but disagree with this statement. It was, in fact, the monasteries, for the most part, that kept what knowledge there was in the West, alive during the Dark Ages.

Sorry - a bit off topic.

[jp80874]

There has been so much available for the home darkroom as more and more people switched to digital. Four years ago I equipped an 11x13 foot darkroom with everything I needed for 35mm up through 7x17 inch including Jobo CPP-2, LPL 4550XLG/VCCE and Durst 138S converted to 8x10 enlargers and an eight foot stainless sink. Everything was second hand, almost new gear at 30 cents on the dollar. The only new piece I bought was an F stop timer.

There are people who have to have new, but it just didn’t make sense to me with so much good stuff available at such low prices. The bulk of the equipment was from a wedding pro who was the presenter in workshops for Kodak. They gave him the digital gear he needed and said get rid of his six month old darkroom. The LPL was from someone’s retirement fantasy darkroom. The man bought the enlarger as he came down with a lung disease. His doctor said, “Do not go in a darkroom.” The LPL had never been used.

John Powers