Nice report, Dean. I have never been to any of them. Most of my new
stuff is from B&H and a few small items from Adorama. My D100 was
from Samy's in Los Angeles which is a pretty big store. The rest from
Keh's in Georgia.
Winsor
Long Beach, CA
USA
On Aug 22, 2007, at 7:36 PM, Dean Hansen wrote:
> My wife and I recently spent a few days with friends on Long
> Island,
> NY, and I took a day to visit Manhattan, in part to see a couple
> well-known camera stores.
> First stop was B&H. A doorman greeted me and let me in, then
> there
> were two more gentlemen (could one almost say bouncers?) to pass
> before
> entering the sales area. Once in, I stopped and did some mental
> arithmetic: 6 men behind that counter, 8 behind that one, 5 behind
> another, 8 in front of another, and on and on. Except for a few
> cashiers, all were males. There seemed to be close to 100 people
> WORKING there. I mentioned that to a salesman, and he simply said
> that they add a couple dozen more on Sunday, when it's wall to wall
> people in there. Wow.
> Digital cameras were out on counters (cabled, of course) to
> hold and
> examine. The variety was impressive. Lenses and bodies behind
> glass at
> the sales counters, however, seemed pretty scarce. I walked
> upstairs to
> the single room with used equipment, and here again I was surprised at
> the lack of rows and rows of lenses, bodies, flashes, bellows,
> whatever,
> on display. If one wanted a T-20 OM flash, it may well have been
> there
> somewhere in inventory; it wasn't out on display, however.
> I bought a couple books on photographing, of all things, insects.
> Otherwise I escaped with my credit card quite intact. Actually buying
> something was a new experience: I gave a used book I wanted to buy
> to a
> salesman, he scanned it and gave me a receipt, and then the book went
> into a plastic crate on a conveyor to a pick-up area on the first
> floor. I couldn't simply carry it down to pay for it. Back on the
> first floor, I paid the cashier from the receipt, and then I had
> to go
> to the pick-up area and wait a few minutes for the book to
> roller-coaster its way down from the second floor.
> Adorama was only a moderate walk away. I bought my first OM4T
> from
> them 20-some years ago. Size was nothing like B&H, and, really, there
> was less out on display to buy than at West Photo or National Camera
> Exchange here in Minneapolis.
> The next day I visited Cameta Camera in Amityville, Long Island.
> Despite the Manhattan skyline 20 miles away, it's a small-town store.
> This is where I bought my new E-1 (BIN'd at Cameta's ebay auctions)
> and
> used Nikon FE-2, Nikon FTN, plus a Vivitar lens, all from their
> website. There were about 6 salesmen behind a single counter, and
> again, there weren't loads and loads of lenses under glass. Are they
> all locked up, and just brought up front when one asks for a
> particular
> lens?
> I can see more lenses on display at the Twin Cities F-stop Swaps
> than I saw in total at these three camera stores.
> Prices, however, are much better buying from the websites of B&H,
> Adorama, and Cameta than buying locally. A brick of E100VS from
> B&H is
> about half what I'd have to pay here. I saved at least a couple
> hundred
> dollars buying the E-1 from Cameta.
> Dean
>
>
>
>
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