Brick & Mortar Photo Shops

intheviewfinder

intheviewfinder

Street
Local time
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Joined
Mar 3, 2011
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There's no thread documenting photo stores, shops , etc?
Let's see some. Keep the hope alive <grin>
Inside, outside - don't care.

Let me start...
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Bromfield Camera, Boston MA USA
Family owned and operated camera store. One of the oldest, if not the oldest in New England. Been around for nearly 50 years.
 
Livesteamer said:
If you are ever in Chicago, check out Central Camera. A wonderful old store with a little bit of everything. Joe
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I used to love going to Altmans but it's been gone for years. I think it was billed as the largest camera store in the US in its day. It was a couple of doors down from Central Camera.
 
When I was in college twenty five years ago, I worked at Columbus Camera Group in Columbus, Ohio. What an amazing inventory they had. A lot of you Guys probably perused their "Shutterbug" ads in that magazine. At one point we were up to ten pages of stuff! I literally answered calls from all over the world. My specific areas of expertise were the extensive Leica and large format items at the "white church". What an experience.

Scan-150209-0001 by Nokton48, on Flickr

Columbus Camera Group exterior detail. 9x9cm image Plaubel Makiflex SLR, exposed on 4x5" Efke PL100 sheet film.







Yesterday I took my Wife to Midwest Photo Exchange to buy a new long zoom for her Canon digital. Their new location is very spacious. It is huge inside. They have two maxed out rental darkrooms, and even have a very spacious classroom with plug ins for your laptop! Midwest Photo was started by two of the partners from Columbus Camera Group. Quite a success story in our area.

You can handle the merch and they are very competitive regarding camera prices

url=https://flic.kr/p/GYpHtt]
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[/url]mpex by Nokton48, on Flickr
 
Too bad, so sad with so many shops gone. I worked at Altman's for about 2.5 years, right up to May, 1975 when they closed. There simply was no other like it. In the early to mid 70's there were probably 10 camera stores either within the Loop (downtown Chicago) or just outside. Besides Altman's there was Wolk's, (3 locations) Central, Bass, Shutan, Camera Exchange, plus several others whose names escape me now. Also neighbor stores, Darkroom Aids was one and a bunch more.

In 2009 returned after 30 years for a visit to Chicago, except for Central, they are all gone. Can not even find what happened or when to Wolk's, no trace. Same for most of the rest.
 
Fort Wayne's last camera store closed back in July after 90 years in business. Sad. There are only three good camera stores left anywhere in Indiana now.
 
zuiko85 said:
Besides Altman's there was Wolk's, (3 locations) Central, Bass, Shutan, Camera Exchange, plus several others whose names escape me now.
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My first camera of my own came from Bass. I needed one in a hurry to finish a class I was taking, and the old Minolta SR-1 I was using at the time (my parents) died in the middle of a field trip we made to Chicago. So on Saturday, my dad took me to Bass and we bought the cheapest new SLR they had and we proceeded to re-trace the trip which had taken place just a few days earlier.
 
Wing's Camera in Atlanta, GA has been in continuous operation for over 100 years---it's a great place to do business!
Paul
 
Drinking beer in the camera shop..... Only in Portland! (Love Portland)

Blue Moon is a breath of fresh air. They have used Leica, some rather interesting items too.
 
zuiko85 said:
Too bad, so sad with so many shops gone. I worked at Altman's for about 2.5 years, right up to May, 1975 when they closed. There simply was no other like it. In the early to mid 70's there were probably 10 camera stores either within the Loop (downtown Chicago) or just outside. Besides Altman's there was Wolk's, (3 locations) Central, Bass, Shutan, Camera Exchange, plus several others whose names escape me now. Also neighbor stores, Darkroom Aids was one and a bunch more.

In 2009 returned after 30 years for a visit to Chicago, except for Central, they are all gone. Can not even find what happened or when to Wolk's, no trace. Same for most of the rest.
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Dodd Camera is not old here but just expanded into a larger space.
 
rfaspen said:
Drinking beer in the camera shop..... Only in Portland! (Love Portland)

Blue Moon is a breath of fresh air. They have used Leica, some rather interesting items too.
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I live in Olympia but get down to Portland once in a while. Only visited Blue moon once. Prices seemed a bit high but you are right, a breath of fresh air. Don't have much money but felt I should support them in some way so I bought 2 rolls of film for my Minox 8X11, $20 a roll but I'll reload the cartridges many times and do my own B&W so that price is amortized over many rolls. All they get are the empty cartridges, they have to apply felt and load them with film. I think they must be using a rolling slitter to cut down 35mm to 2 strips of 9.2 mm. They are the distributor for Minox film for all of North America. Otherwise it's buy NOS film on ebay, discard the film and reload.
 
genes-camera-store-1.jpg


Gene's Camera Store is on Main Street in Mishawaka, Indiana. Small town camera shops are rapidly disappearing all over the United States due to competition from big online stores. Even in large cities, many camera stores are struggling to stay open. Mishawaka is a small city of about 50,000 people on the northern edge of Indiana, between the larger cities of South Bend and Elkhart.

Indiana still has a number of locally owned camera stores that have managed to survive. Gene's also has a larger store in nearby South Bend, Indiana's fourth largest city. The South Bend store is much more modern and includes a full-service professional photo lab. I've had them do large format digital prints for me when I have sold prints too big to print at home, and the quality was great.
 
Would you all really make major purchases from these shops? I mean versus online.

Chicago sales tax is 10.25%. That's a premium I'm not willing to pay. But I also would not go in and look, knowing I will buy online. I visit Central for film and other low-cost items, but that's about it.

John
 
johnwolf said:
Would you all really make major purchases from these shops? I mean versus online.

Chicago sales tax is 10.25%. That's a premium I'm not willing to pay. But I also would not go in and look, knowing I will buy online. I visit Central for film and other low-cost items, but that's about it.

John
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I actually bought a lot of gear, both new and used, from Sunny Schick. I also bought an enormous amount of film, paper, ink, and chemicals from them over the years. The only time I bought online was if i needed something they didn't carry.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
I actually bought a lot of gear, both new and used, from Sunny Schick. I also bought an enormous amount of film, paper, ink, and chemicals from them over the years. The only time I bought online was if i needed something they didn't carry.
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How about now, Chris? Say you were buying the 5D IV. Would you pay the extra $225 (in my case $328) to buy local? Honestly, I would not. The local shops really are at an unfortunate disadvantage.

John
 
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