Originally posted by Kombivan In Australia fron 1976 to 1985 in Australia in the costal country area where I lived there were no camera shops at the time so people here were using their Praktia's with sun zoom lens Carl Zesis lens etc and the only new cameras were purchased from the chemist as the chemist handled the film etc in those days and they mostly supported Kodak yes the box brownie was a profesional camera too, they sold mostly hanimex, kodak and instamatic cameras a lot of which were plastic so I guess like all good things in those days you would have needed to mail order a camera from a magazine and Nikon 's advertising + 007 they would have been mostly ordered it would depend on what was proven, and how good the adds were as to which camera was ordered along with word of mouth. Japanese cameras cars etc were like chinese stuff today but better quality I would have expected better quality from china as they are basicly the same race as the Japanese it was china that conqurered Japan long ago.back to my point which I don't really have, It's like dirt bikes as well they were simply ordered through the magazines, now there is no real reason why 35mm couldn't be used professionally but those of you who saw the era know the Medium and large format cameras won the day 35mm really just didn't cut it as you didn't have the larger negative to start cropping with it was only when the 35mm got sopfisticated with quality zoom lenses that they were accepted. Even in the late 90's first question was do you have a medium format camera it was the versilitality of the zoom lenses that really opened the doors and the flood of newcomers like myself that forced the 35mm onto the publishers as we didn't want to use the medium format because to get a good shot with a medium format you would spend ages setting up your shot but the 35mm you could already get 20 shots off in the same time. The reason for this was any imperfections on medium format would show up big time but 35mm could escape a lot of the scrunity the 35mm was also the birth of the action shot, no more posing of football teams etc it could all be caught on the field etc and if you missed the shot with a medium size camera the shot was gone but the 35mm slr you could go after it for a second chance. Most old photo's in cold wet countries would have been taken with old manual cameras the k1000 was from what I was hearing a very popular camera in these enviroments as they never let the user down as with the SP The sp was a very clever move by pentax as it enabled the use of all the preexisting m42 lenses then when the K1000 came people were hooked on the Pentax features and then had to start buying k-mount lenses or m42 pk adapters and the k-mount lens is why your all here today you have your lenses and you don't want to be forced to buy new lenses by a change in lens mount. We are also here because we are nice people and I myself wouldn't want a Nikon because of the nature of people that buy Nikon. Except one guy my tafe teacher he was cool he never taught me anything wasn't his fault I already knew what he was teaching but he is a dam nice person.
I really don't agree with some of your assessment of medium format film. I've been shooting MF for years and have posted countless images here in that format. I can reach for a manual, small format camera but I pass right over it and take one of my MF out instead. Sure, it is not as fast and quick as a fully automagic small format camera. But if you can take the picture with a K1000, you can pretty much take it with a MF camera.
And we're talking about the elusive online forum pro's wants, needs and uses I suspect. But I'm reminded what it says on my Fuji GSW690III every time I use it, "Professional", because it has no light meter or any help taking the pictures at all were, presumably, only a "pro" could take a successful picture with it, I guess.