Father Kodak wrote:
On Mon, 20 Feb 2006 17:37:43 -0800, Gordon Moat
wrote:



So a little weird bit of outside reality. In San Diego, which should not
be used as a model for any general trends (except high prices), I have
recently noticed many more old film SLRs in use. While that might not
sound surprising, the part about it that surprised me a little is that
people fresh out of high school are the ones picking up on this. Even
the professional lab I used made a comment about it. So I asked a few
people last night at this one cafe' I frequent, and the answer to why an
old film SLR brought some not too surprising answers.


Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com


Gordon,

I haven't been to San Diego in 2-3 years now, always like the small,
convenient airport access near to downtown hotels and such.

What *I* have noticed is that all those old Nikon F series mechanical
bodies are being bid up on ebay. And there can't be THAT many
collectors, especially for the "user" cameras.

Father Kodak

It would be very interesting if some university statistics students ran
a data gathering investigation of EBAY, maybe just being specific with
35 mm SLRs, or even just Nikon SLRs that still function. EBAY is very
strict on not providing statistics on buying habits broken down to
specific data sets. If I were to guess, I would imaging there are more
usable Nikon film cameras sold on EBAY world-wide each year than what
Nikon sell new . . . just a guess, but probably would be surprising numbers.

While I did not notice any really collectible cameras in use recently,
there were many Nikon and Canon manual focus bodies that I saw. Like I
stated, probably just some weird local activity. Though it is
interesting to see how many auctions run for this gear, and like you
stated a great deal of it is not dust collector shelf pieces.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat
A G Studio
http://www.allgstudio.com