Re: [Leica] London prices

[Daniel Bowdoin <danlb@mindspring.com>]

Stephen Patriquen wrote

>. . . . . . There is also the London "City"
>problem where Wall Street types will walk in and buy
>an M6ttl and three lenses at full retail on the spur
>of the moment. There are lots of flash cars in this
>city, and a retailer can get hooked on the easy money.

This reference to "Wall Steet types" reminds me of something. When I
first became interested in photography in a really serious way . . .
serious enough to consider making it my life's work . . . I was living in
NYC. By nothing more than coincidence the first pro camera store I ever
saw was Ken Hansen's first shop, the one that was in the same building as
Marty Forscher's camera repair facility. I was impressed and encouraged
by how friendly and knowledgeable and patient everyone there seemed to
be. Those people had no idea how they were affecting the direction my
life would take, nor how much they were teaching me. When Ken Hansen
moved down to his much bigger shop on Broadway I followed along, and it
was there that I had my first serious exposure to Leica. One of Ken's
salespeople took my down to the end of the long counter and without
trying to sell me anything, almost as if just to pass some time, spent
almost two hours talking with me about the kind of photography I was
doing, showing me similar work by Leica photographers, and letting me
handle various combinations of lenses and bodies. I was really impressed
. . . probably as much by the way that salesperson interacted with me as
with the Leica hardware . . . and after a week of mulling it over I
brought in my three Nikon F3s, motor drives, and eight Nikkor lenses and
swapped them for a new R4 and two second-hand lenses. I later learned
that the nice salesperson's name was Jim Lager. Not a bad way to be
introduced to Leica. But my reason for writing this has to do with
something else I learned for the first time at Ken Hansen's. There was a
long counter and at that counter were always people who could be divided
roughly into two types. There were men (always men) in suits, Burberry
trenchcoats, Patek Philippe wristwatches . . . you get the idea . . .
looking at mint twin lens Rolleis or new Leica R or M cameras or
sometimes used Leicas like mint SL2mots, and then there were men and
occasionally women in jeans with holes in the knees, old army field
jackets, tennis shoes . . . again, you get the idea . . . who usually had
things to trade for newer-but-still-second-hand Leica stuff, usually
lenses. It didn't take me long to figure out that the Burberry group were
lawyers, orthodontists, and such, and that the worn-out jeans group had
the Pulitzer prizes. It was one of my first introductions to the economic
realities of photography as a profession.

Regards

Daniel Bowdoin