To the older photographers here

Evil Twin?

Evil Twin?

Tom A said:
Using Leica M's in the 60's - there was not much chance for GAS. There was the M2 and the M3 and later the M4. Lenses were limited and once you had a working kit (21/3.4, 35f2 or 1.4, 50 f2 or 1/4 and the 90f2_ you were pretty much set. Leica's "cycle" was usually 5-7 years - and with lenses even longer/ OK, the GAS came in the form of accessories (flashes, tripod's etc).
The Nikon F did come with just about every bit you could wish for - but you had to carry it too. Hasselblad was the same, but usually you got the Superwide, a 500C, 60/100/250 and that was it. If there were changes, they had to be measurable to justify the expense.
Today's "cycle" of months or maybe a year is a marketing ploy to a great extent. Move a screw, add a minor feature and advertise the hell out of it!
A lot of time you got used stuff, it was cheaper to pick up another body than have the dropped one fixed (bl.p M4 $80. bl.p M2 $ 60-100 and bl.p M3's around $100). These where usually swapped at the paper or between friends. Still not cheap when you consider that monthly pay was around $225-250.
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Almost to the letter I lived my camera life identically with Tom's.
I had a military M2R and IIIf too. I swapped the M2R for a 3 year old Triumph TR3 after I bought my M4 (which I still have). I was living in Washington State and thumbed to Austin Texas to make the deal. Leicas were expensive! The rest of Tom's collection was pretty much the same as I had/have too, other than I had/have Bronica S2's instead of the 500C. I still have 3 4x5's, the oldest is a Graphic View I picked up in the 60's. My father was a photographer, we always had a well laid out dark room in the family home, and I inhaled fix from the time I was 8. The old man collected cameras and he really got into Nikons, so I had access to them. I considered them a passing fad and invested in Leica. I guess I was wrong, but it wasn't until 4 years ago I bought my first SLRs (old Olympus OM's and digital Canons).
 
wblynch said:
Yep, the difference between Gear Lust and Gear Acquisition...

Back in the 70's my OM-1 with one lens cost half a month's wages. With a young bride and a couple of daughters it was 25 years before I bought a second, used, OM-10 for back up.

Now I have a dozen of the OM beasties in various flavors. Cheap and easy to get in the digital age.

So in summary: young = lust, old = gas.
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😡😡😡....

😛😛😛
 
I already owned a Nikon Photomic F when i got to PJ school at UT in 1973. I worked all my college years so I always had funds for cameras and euipment and darkroom supplies.When I took Winogrand's class I had to get a Leica and there was a used M3 at Capital Camera w a 50 cron and i later bought a 28mm. I bought a Nikkor 20, 35, 105 and a 200 for primes.
Since I had darkroom access at the PJ school (which was better than the Art School darkroom) , all i had to do was buy paper. The school provided all the chemicals. I could check out a Nikon kit but I had one of my own so I never did.
What was interesting was i never made that much money in a given year but I always had money for cameras.I bought a second Nikon (F2) body with a motor but that kit plus a Vivitar 283 was all i needed for ten years! All I shot was tri-x and K25/64. I got a CL to round out my rangefinder kit and that was good for ten years too.
Later as a working PJ, I got into nature photography and got long lenses, fisheyes and underwater housing so i guess that is classified as GAS but most of my purchases were determined by where my assignments were taking me and the kind of images i could take that would make me some money.
 
Had to have money back then for G.A.S. Heck, gas for the 69 Roadrunner was .39 cents a gallon. Remember when we had to wait in line to buy gas every other day in the USA. Kinda like waiting in line for the camera shows.

If you had an F3 & a 69 Roadrunner, you got the girls. LOL
 
I had a Barracuda formula S in those days, 67 vintage.
And A Agfa Isolette, Both were hand me downs from a very cool grandmother 🙂
 
Yes, there was.

But the pace, or rate of change, was much slower. So the pot was heated at a low simmer instead of a rolling boil.
 
When I was in high-school in the late 70s / early 80s I knew of only one Leica collector (a wealthy lawyer who wanted to have all cameras of the "Leica Stammbaum") but otherwise I didn`t know anybody who would have been able to buy a Leica, Hasselblad or Technika. We had our Nikon (FM or FE) or Canon (AE1, F1), one or two lenses and used our stuff. Buying / selling was locally only, with quite high fees for placing an ad in the local newspaper so GAS did not exist for us.
 
maddoc said:
When I was in high-school in the late 70s / early 80s I knew of only one Leica collector (a wealthy lawyer who wanted to have all cameras of the "Leica Stammbaum") but otherwise I didn`t know anybody who would have been able to buy a Leica, Hasselblad or Technika. We had our Nikon (FM or FE) or Canon (AE1, F1), one or two lenses and used our stuff. Buying / selling was locally only, with quite high fees for placing an ad in the local newspaper so GAS did not exist for us.
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Same time, same circumstances for me; not much of a used market outside the pawn shops, and the one local camera store was REALLY expensive. My father sent his IIIf out for shutter work twice through that shop, but it wasn't fixed properly - they just wanted to sell him a Nikon. He finally took a trip into Chicago and bought another IIIf body at Central Camera while he was there. He thought about buying some Canon ltm glass too, but he didn't know enough about it, and passed :bang:

For my graduation in '81, I got a Minolta XD-5 kit from the new store that opened in town. Sure, I wanted more lenses, but even used glass was out of reach on a college budget.
 
I'm a "young" guy (~30) and therefore not equipped to comment on the original topic, but I wanted to say thanks to all the ur-GASbags who bought all the gear in the first place, setting in motion the cycle of upgrades and replacements that have allowed me to buy such great used equipment. Hats off to you!
 
You have to ask???????????!! Of course GAS existed back then. Even back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, as they did why I was a boy. Of course when you're a boy, you don't have much disposable income (I believe that's the term I'm looking for), so a box Brownie was IT, for many years! In my case, I wanted a Crown Graphic, but Dad bought me a Polaroid Model 95, instead. Then that lasted many years, and so on, and so on, and so on.

With best regards,

Pfreddee(Stephen)
 
I already had GAS in the early '70s with an Instamatic, Halina Paulette, and Franka 6x6 folder: rich trove for a kid. 🙂 Of course, I wanted more, but pocket money did not permit. I visited the pro photo shop repeatedly to drool on the SL66 and, later, the newly released Contax RTS.
 
History of Shutterbug magazine (for anyone who cares)

History of Shutterbug magazine (for anyone who cares)

Ever wonder how "Shutterbug Ads" came to be? (probably not, but here it is anyway)

in the 1960's Glenn Patch, a computer technician who worked at the Air Force Eastern Test Range (now Kennedy Space Flight Center) was editor of the Space Center Camera Club newsletter which had a popular classified section. After the US won the great space race with the USSR by several Apollo lunar landings, the space center laid off about 10,000 workers in 1972-73. Glenn was one of those laid off but kept the newsletter going on a personal basis as he was a photographer and collector / trader of stereo cameras. After a number of very lean years, the newsletter began making money and became Shutterbug Ads, published in Titusville FL adjacent to the space center. Shutterbug eventually became a very profitable business for Glenn after many years of struggling.

When Apple introduced the Apple II in the late 1970's, Glenn saw a need for a computer equivalent to Shutterbug so hobbyists could sell their original Apples and other used computers. This became Computer Shopper which Glenn eventually sold for really big dollars and retired to Branson MO. He also sold Shutterbug at that time.

I bought most of my camera gear used through Shutterbug in the 1970's. I also worked with Glenn Patch on another venture. But Glenn was so scrupulously honest, that he would not let anyone see a copy of Shutterbug before it was on the newsstand so no insider could take advantage of an advertised good deal before it went public.

Glenn Patch was also the astronaut's private "party photographer" because of his personal discretion. Early astronauts were serious heavy duty party people. Glenn could be relied on to photograph, develop film, make prints, then deliver prints AND negatives while never disclosing who was at the party or what transpired.
 
I had GAS but no coin to relieve it back then,
but now I can afford the old beauties...and, er,... beasts.
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