Originally posted by Scintilla I'm pretty sure what rdenney meant was that, if you bought the 6x7 plus lens when it was new (1969?), and then converted that price to 2011 dollars by adding 40 years' worth of inflation, it would come out to $10,000.
Yes, and I got that from a Ctein article on The Online Photographer. Ctein was an early adopter of the 6x7, having bought (new) the fifth one imported into the US.
At that time, I was using what was a dream camera for me, a Yashica Lynx 5000e 35mm fixed-lens rangefinder, for which I paid $50. It took me a few more years to move up to medium format, which I did with a Yashica 635. Then, when I started getting pay work, I bought a used Mamiya C-3. I remember seeing a pro making photos, using a 6x7 on about an 8’ tripod, of booths at the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston in about 1975. There was never a time after that moment I didn’t want one. It was in those days hopelessly expensive relative to income. (I now make—on a regular salary—ten times what I made in 1981, and even that was
after the most severe inflationary period of the last century. The original price of the 6x7 was before that period.)
Pro stuff has always been expensive. Ctein went further to assert that nothing from Hasselblad or Rollei (and he was looking at the beautiful SL66) could beat the Pentax for quality. Even then, the bigPentax was a good value, but it was still pro stuff.
Rick “who used to have old photo magazines for doing historical price research” Denney
---------- Post added 03-19-18 at 09:39 AM ----------
Originally posted by gofour3 I bought my Pentax 6x7, 67 and 67ii all around that time. All were boxed and in mint condition and the most expensive was the 67ii at slightly over $1100.00 and that included the AE metered prism.
I also bought 16 6x7 lenses and everything in total cost less than 10k???
Phil.
It’s interesting to me that the going rates for 67II’s now seem much higher than what you paid.
I suspect the retail price for a new one in 2009, before they were officially discontinued, was rather more than what you paid, if you could have found one in stock to buy.
As mentioned above, the $10k number was the effect of inflation brought forward from 1969 to 2011, an analysis done by Ctein. Working backwards, the purchase price would have been about $1600 for the kit he described, in 1969, if he used the same inflation calculator I did. I remember looking at an ad for a Sinar F, the first year they came out (1972) which priced it (without lens) at $1200–the “budget” Sinar. That would be $7k now.
A 645z, at the recent discounted price of $5500, with a $4500 zoom lens, would now be $10k. Were the dollar worth now what it was in 1969, it would be $1500, cheaper than that original 6x7 kit. That doesn’t consider that the 645z comes with a lifetime supply of film
Rick “pro stuff, even Pentax pro stuff, has always been expensive” Denney