Re:1960s prices and other fantasies

[Fred Ward <fward@erols.com>]

Hello all,

First a comment. I recently switched from real-time mail to the 
Digest form because it works so well for me on other topics. Instead 
of a nightly digest, I have been getting perhaps only 2-3 a week. I 
wonder if others are having this trouble, if that was or is going to 
be the norm, or if it is supposed to be daily. If this persists I 
think I will go back to real-time. Even if it weren't for the 
annoyance factor, I need to keep more current with you because I 
don't want my anger at some of the off-the-wall comments on here to 
wan before I get a chance to charge back.

Now for the "down memory lane" department. As a budding 
photojournalist in South Florida in the late 1950s and early 1960s I 
both expanded my Leica collection as well as my assignments from the 
"biggie" magazines. I was using my original M-3, which I bought in 
Germany, and then a pair of M-2s. For telephoto work I started with 
a Topcon (first SLR with a through the lens meter), moved to Pentax 
(first SLRs with instant-return mirrors, automatic stop-down and 
reopen lenses, and meters), and then to the just-introduced original 
Nikon F (whose meter was an awful clunky box on top of the prism). 

Since I was in Florida and since TIME-LIFE, my main employers, 
handled the US South and all the Caribbean from its Miami Bureau, I 
traveled a lot. Soon I found that there were strange bargains in 
several places in the Caribbean. Unlike the tourist-trap "duty-free 
shops" for jewelry and liquor, a store in Nassau, one in St. Thomas, 
and another in Jamaica actually did sell duty-free cameras. And I 
found one in Panama that sold me a fully equipped German Arriflex, 
the world's premier 16mm movie camera, for about half its USA cost 
(an outfit I still have, if anyone is interested). 

Well, at that time I was buying M-2s for about $125. I remember 
being upset when they rose to $150. I bought Leica 10X40 Trinovid 
binoculars for $115, a great bargain. I still use them at the 
theatre every few weeks. I bought Leicas there often, for myself, 
for others. I used the manual rapid-winders, which were about $25, 
and liked the M-2s so much that I actually had a Miami repairman put 
M-3 viewfinders in some of them so I could put a 50mm permanently on 
such an M-2, giving me a big, bright viewfinder, and putting a 35 on 
another M-2 and a 28mm on yet another. It was a great combo. And 
with the odd-man Nikon F with a 105mm, this made an unbeatable 
journalism package. This was before zooms and before anything of 
fast, high quality except the all-manual Zeiss 180mm 2.8 lens that 
all of us used to made portrait covers. 

The day-rate for photojournalism then was $50/day plus expenses. It 
moved on up to $75/day later in the 60s. So, an M-2 cost me 3 days 
pay. Today National Geographic, TIME, and others are usually paying 
$350/day on assignment, and sometimes pay $400. Thus, it would take 
several more days of work to pay for an M-4 or M-6.

I believe the conclusion is that it was easier for working 
photographers to buy fine equipment then. 

Fred Ward

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