I've not been on my blog for a while for the past month, due to being too busy. My schedule is getting rather hectic at the moment and I will be running my first Scottish photo workshop in exactly a week's time from now - on the Isle of Eigg.
So I've had a lot of material to prepare for the trip - I've now got a lot of tutorials for Photoshop editing, understanding exposure, dynamic range and some background to my own approach to landscape photography. All good stuff.
So whilst preparing for the trip, I made an order for some more Velvia 50 RVP. Only to discover that it's gone up 43% in price.
I had an idea that you'd be thinking 'film is dead - it's getting expensive because no one uses it anymore'. But it's not just film that's gone up.
Have you noticed the crazy prices for Nikon and Canon gear, or anything Japanese for that matter? It's the ecomomy that's gone down here in the UK, or the strength of the Yen.
Here's another example: I've been thinking about buying a used Mamiya 7 43mm lens. Admittedly, it's a little bit wider than my usual preference, but I've found recently that there has been a few locations requiring such a wide lens. The eBay price is around £650 for a mint one and if my memory is right, the lens used to be around £1,100 new. Not anymore it isn't. It's £1,700 before vat (15%). Which takes the lens up to £1995. Just shy of 2K for a lens that should be just over 1K.
My Sekonic light meter (L-608) is a bit on the bashed/worn out side these days so I was looking to replace it. It turns out that if I buy the new L-758 from Sekonic, which has more (unwanted) features than you could shake a stick at, it comes in for exactly what I paid for my 608 seven years ago! I'm curious as to why Sekonic's prices have stayed the same when everyone else has rocketed their prices? Is it because external light meters aren't that much in demand?
Photography is rapidly becoming a very expensive pursuit for most of us, and for the pro's, well it just means having to keep running with the same worn out kit for a bit longer - but that's nothing new :-)