| The tortuous path towards a camera collection Part 3 - Shopping from home |  |
| Maurizio Frizziero | |
| The tortuous path towards a camera collection Part 3 - Shopping from home | |
| Maurizio Frizziero | |
 David Woodford now at Classic Collection |
Shopping from Home Before starting to walk, to look for, to do other fatigues that for us are completely compensated when we find what we are looking for, let us rest a little, learning to do shopping from home, even during the evening, or from our office during the breaks. Using the differences of the time zones, we could order, sometimes at a reduced telephonic rate, those things that interest us from European or American dealers or private collectors. It is only necessary to locate them, to know what they have to sell and to possess a credit card. This way of ordering and of paying, unimaginable up to a few years ago, is now accepted all over the world, a little less, even decidedly less, in Italy where the credit card has a recent history and where the direct sale by mail order is practised almost esclusively by cash on delivery. Instead in the foreign countries your fax, or your letter, is accepted like a cheque. This way of buying is made easy because, if we think of the peculiar sector about which we are speaking, it is unimaginable that the buyer, usually a collector, becomes insolvent for the relatively modest sums involved in the average purchase. By fax you can even achieve some friendships: the first time I entered Jessop, in London, I met an employee and he wondered if I had need of help. I answered "no", that I was browsing, that I knew what they had because I was regularly receiving their catalogue and I had been their customer for several months. "Our customer?" the clerk was surprised. I smiled telling that I acquired by fax, by credit card (it is sufficient to write name, exp. date, complete number and signature). While I was explaining to him that this was the reason why he didn't know me, answering to my smile he tendered his hand and he did follow my name to his "Good Afternoon". In those years I was the only foreign customer of his shop to acquire by fax. My narcissism went out fortified and Dave Woodford took advantage and sold me an Elbaflex and a VP model B. At the end of the sale he gave me a gift, a second leather case for the VP.
But let us go back to the fax way. |
 Jay O. Tepper |
By Jay O. Tepper, (at those times in West Hartford, now in New Canaan, 74 Clapboard Hill Road, CT 06840, Tel. +1-203-972-5701, Fax +1-203-972-5702 USA), I found a Junior with the typical back of the "C", perfectly functioning. Of this monster I knew anything and I don't know anything now even after a letter from the late Stein: "Regarding your Jr with plate back, it is certainly the only one I have heard of. .... It is now clear that plate backs could be fitted on any camera, being an option more like a lens, although one would have thought not on Jr, as it woud seem impossible to adjust the spacing. I notice that you don't show a ring. There fore presumably the infinity focus is correct with the plate back, but the cameramay not be used with roll film as this requires the spacer." But my Junior has its spacer! After these two stories another story begins: you become Sherlock Holmes, you start to inquire, to ask around, to write to those few persons who know something on the matter, to look for catalogues, handbooks, magazines. You were collecting cameras and now you are submerged by papers. You start to leaf through everything, to memorize a sea of information and, during a day, you decide to write. You know that Aguila and Rouah have written a great book but you know that the search is based prevalently on the items the have seen and they possess, you know that a complete search is impossible, that the few books you can find have been written in the same way. You are aware the Ihagee Historiker Gesellschaft exists, six persons with the common objective of researching the history and the production of the Dresden company. You start to write alternative things about you and about your collections, you don't go deeply into the details (because you could make big errors). But everything you write has a purpose: to point out to the collector who reads that there are different ways to locate general principles to help build a system without hard and fast rules. You can furnish through examples new approaches to the search, to transform this way of proceeding into a game. But let's leave the philosophy and let's go back to the preceding discourse in order to conclude it. I would say in fact that the theme "fax's facts and misdeeds" could be considered almost exhausted. Fax advantages. You stay in your office; the application is sent in real time even over thousands of kilometers, there is the instant control of the availability, the phone cost is decededly cheaper than one in which you ask the same things, there is an exact documentation of the application, useful above all when when your interlocutor speaks a different language and you can avoid the risk of misundertandings. Fax disadvantages. You cannot see the selected item, you must trust your interlocutor and, above all, you spend more. Not because in this way the things cost more but because, in front of a catalogue with appetizing pieces (and often prices), paying by credit card, it is, more or less, easier to buy a camera, or a lens. Even the prices in different currencies deceive a little: translating in Italian Liras one extends to round the calculation for defect, forgetting that there is the shipping cost and that there is the Value Added Tax (it is calculated even on the shipping cost: for a round magnifier Kine from US I spent more than two hundred dollars. But at the end of the story you are happy because you have the camera you dreamed of!). May be it is better to change discourse before I start to think to the "advantages" of the fax way!
To the fourth part To the Exakta Homepage ...or to the index  In Italiano, per favore! Thanks to Peter Longden. He had the patience to translate my text from "my" English. |