Originally posted by Aristophanes The Yen is the benchmark for glass. Wit the Euro falling, some of that European glass may become more affordable. The Yen will fall dramatically in the next decade, and so will glass prices. It has to. The pension system now has to liquidate and not buy Japanese debt, flooding the market with Yen. If that is delayed for reasons of bizarre macroeconomic manipulation as the samurai class try to levitate the economy even longer, glass production will have to move offshore, as body production has.
Cameras and lenses are a fascinating insight into the forex markets.
And vice-versa. Thanks for this reminder that supply and demand move in strange ways, with unintended consequences. Weaker currency: everything from elsewhere is more expensive, foreign travel costs more, but export demand rises, fueling production (and job?) increases. Stronger currency: everything from elsewhere costs less, travel is cheap and easy, but export demand drops along with production (and jobs?). And it's not zero-sum gamesmanship; that's mercantilist thinking, deadly poison in a global economy.
I could travel to Europe a decade ago, especially with Lira-Dollar rate at 2000:1. No more. I can barely afford travel in USA, but not Canada (damn the strong Loony!) I can still afford Mexico because its economy is even slightly worse than in USA, so spending pesos is easier. Too bad I haven't looked for lenses there. Hmmm, I'll have to rummage through National Pawnshop branches next time...
And now that Guatemala is continuing to stabilize, the Quetzal is stronger. Xela and Gringotenango and La Antigua aren't quite the bargains they were a few years ago. But there's less roadside trash, fewer shotgun-toting guards, more development, so maybe paying an extra dime for a beer ain't so bad. And they even prosecute a corrupt ex-president! And process film! It just gets better...
Originally posted by séamuis bastards. who informed the canonites of this? *runs to hide takumars*
THEY'RE TAKING OUR LENSES! That's even worse than stealing our women or kicking our dogs! The villains! And we can't even use their old glass in return. Yeah, Pentax needs to make a reduced-register EVIL/MILC platform that'll take FD and LTM glass with cheap adapters. Then we'll have some parity. And I won't have to just sit here and look at that pile of FD's and LTM's I ended up with and wonder how I'll ever unload them.
I need to get out more. Go to suburbs. To retirement-home rummage sales. Where some photog's widow(er) has a suitcase full of old Takumar or Mamiya or Meyer or Isco stuff they want to get rid of, "just to get this trash out of here". Or into a decaying city. To a warehouse demolition. Where a palette of boxes marked Asahi or Honeywell was found in some forgotten corner, and shoved aside. Is this too much to hope for?