LF Television Battle By the Automakers

Just saw an ad by Subaru for one of their vehicles. Once again, they

are showing a large format camera and photographer. That's time

number 2 since the one recently by Chevrolet. Maybe both vehicles

are offering LF as accessories!

 

Regards,

 

John Bailey

John, did the ad have the obligatory whirrrr of a motor-drive on the sound track? OK, I'm putting cup holders on my 'dorff!

----------Cheers!

It looks like a few TV advertising agencies are beginning to realize that LF photographers enjoy using their 4-wheel SUV's to get out in the wilderness and explore senic vistas that are not readily available to the 2-wheel drive crowd. I'm always impressed when someone recognizes our existence in the market place and targets us as potential customers. They also target river rafters and kiyakers (sp?). You know, that guy lost in the foggy icy water and uses his remote controller to sound the horn and flash the lights on his SUV, like a lighthouse, to guide him back to his vehicle. Clever advertising.

It seems as though for a short period people may actually percieve me as 'cool'. Egads! Then again it may be the last activity that carmakers haven't co-opted to sell cars.

In the Subaru ad, the image on the GG is actually upside down

and lighter in the middle and darker at the edges.

 

Also, NBC's promo inserts feature LF camera although you don't

see them every time: you see the cast of the West Wing, for

example, or ER, all formaled up and posed. In longer versions,

you can see that they are posing for a portrait in front of an LF

camera. Image right side up and bright.

 

dgh

You folks are getting way too excited. Subaru was just trying to contrast a point and shoot with a more serious camera (as in a "more serious 4WD"). They don't really care about the "large format photographer" market, which is a minuscule portion of the potential 4WD market. No amount of auto advertising is going to make large format photographers look �cool,� unless they are shown to be shooting nudes.

Aaron,

<<It seems as though for a short period people may actually percieve me as 'cool<<

 

Not if you use the word Egads! ;-) j/k

 

I saw a print ad a while ago for, I think an investment company with a LF photographer. I think the implication was you better have some money stashed away if you�re going to be an "art" photographer.

I htink ytoui should be insulted. Using LF as a come-on to market something "out of the ordinary", when the real market is every-bit-ordinary. Most these SUVs are not used to scale to the top of the next mesa (and curse the ones that carve up the land); they are used to gulp gas in Suburbia. Of course, they used to be sold by demosntraintg the ease that girls could be picked up. Same league of truth in advertising.

>they are used to gulp gas in Suburbia. Of course, they used

>to be sold by demosntraintg the ease that girls could be picked up. >Same league

>of truth in advertising.

 

Actually, I find a Deardorff is much more effective for picking up girls....

 

they are very good for shooting nude models too

<i>Actually, I find a Deardorff is much more effective for picking up girls....

 

 

they are very good for shooting nude models too</i><p>

Darn it!! I knew I should have gotten one of them.....

You know, I really don't know how SUVs all of a sudden got to be the vehicle that satan drives around hell in. Yes, the bigger ones suck up gas like crazy and so do big cars and high powered sports cars. Yes, if you don't need that kind of power it's wastful in any vehicle. Yes, the folks that drive around town in the big jacked up ones and never even hit a dirt road look silly. But a lot of the newer ones are very car like and not all that big and it's nice to have some extra room to carry things when needed. I just don't know what all the fuss is about. Ok this is about as far as topic as anyone can get. Sorry.

P.S. and no in case you were thinking. I don't own an SUV.

Well, I drive a Subaru AND use a large-format camera and I can NEVER pick up women. Of course, that may be because if I did, my wife would bash me over the head with my large-format camera and run over both me and the camera with the Subaru. But they never mention those kinds of consequences in the commercials.

I have a metal 4x5 and a 15 year old Volvo 240. Women have been known to injure themselves in an attempt to not be seen near either one.

 

I don't know if Satan has a car, but God drives a '67 Mustang 289. I'm pretty sure its red.

From the world's point of view, it's all too easy to see the "image" of Americans that turn up their noses at greenhouse concerns and gleefully zoom about in cars that are big enough to carry a platoon. Just one of our many excesses. And even though I joked about taking the chainsaw along to lighten up another discussion I have to say that the commercials showing these things grinding their way to the top of every western mesa that their owners are too lazy to walk up put me off. Not sure that's the crowd I want to be associated with. Hell, who needs a chain saw, you just mow the trees down on your way to that pristine spot that you set up your view camera. Let's be honest, they are an excessive yuppie status symbol.

15 years ago I could afford a nice Chevy Suburban, good cigars, single-malt scotch and, if I had been into it then, a 'dorff. Since then I've had to give up on trucks, cigars, switched to Guinness and picked up a 5x7 Korona with holy bellows. If anything else I like becomes trendy I'll be in the poor house. I'm reeeeal scared of the day bacon is "discovered".

I just get a kick out of seeing LF gear on TV in ads by major companies.

Seems like most people I run into when I'm shooting LF either think I'm a

complete weirdo or actually know what my camera is and ignore me. But hey

- if my Linhof and 'Dorff are helping me with my public image, then I'm happy.

Of course, maybe a new car would help, too.....I get the feeling my 115,000+

mile Ford Escort station wagon isn't exactly a big draw for the ladies....

LF photographers are an easy choice for models. They market

those trucks to yuppies who sit in flourescent-lit cubicles all day

long, listening to Muzak, and walking on eggshells to make sure

their language is perfectly PC and yet "outside the box".

 

I think they call that "aspirational marketing"; you put the model in

the shot who the customer would "aspire" to be. It could just as

easily be a poet, or a Jack Kerouac, but the LF guy can have

some wooden hardware that adds even more romance. These

guys who slave away for sixty hours a week would love to think

that they'd have the freedom to just roam the world in their SUV,

climb mountains, be Ansel Adams or Mark Klett or Misrach.

 

Yeah, I do feel a bit guilty when I refuel my Ford F150, but that

one vehicle not only serves me as an individual, but it also

services a commercial photography business as well. So in

some twisted justification, I can say that I'm actually helping the

environment by having only one vehicle to do so many things,

rather than a personal car and a worktruck. I also live where I

work, so my commute distance is down a flight of stairs.

 

But don't you know I'd be first in line for one of those hybrid

vehicles, if it had a pickup bed in it. I hate my dependence on oil.

I might as well have a syringe hanging outta my arm.

 

Somehow, I'd love to steer this thread also toward anything

pro-Ebony, just so we could ruffle a few more feathers. I think if

you look close, you can see that most, if not all, of those car

commercials have Ebony cameras in them. That's not really a

Deardorff that you think you see.

 

And why not respond to that other thread too, about the guy who

wanted to drill his holders to reflect the type of film shot? Actually,

it's a little known fact that the Ebony has this slick capability of

imprinting the time, date, shutter speed, fstop, air temperature,

and number of tree branches sawn off. It prints it in that little 1/8"

blank part of the TMAX frame area.

 

And just the mere presence of an Ebony body in a nature area

actually lowers the ozone count.

 

Shall I go on...?

 

-MT, http://www.marktucker.com

Well, maybe it will let people know that LF cameras are actually CAMERAS.

 

I was at a Halloween party this year, and I went as Weegee's Ghost. I took a 4x5 Speed Graphic and an old 545 back with two packs of 800 speed B/W film. I went around and did snapshots with the beast. Really fun, and with my Sunpak 511 I could stop down pretty far so focusing was REALLY easy.

 

But time and again people asked if the camera was REAL....

 

No. It is FAKE. That is a FAKE picture I just took of you and your girlfriend.

 

Lordy....

It seems to me that there is a odd parallel between LF and SUVs. Now I don't even own a car (who needs one in NYC?), but certainly the thought that bigger is better is true for both, no?

 

I can't speak for the ULF crowd or even the 8x10ers, but as a die-hard 5x7er I KNOW that 4x5 is just too dinky and 6x9? hah! might as well get a Minox. So what is the difference between me and the gal next door with the Linco-lac SUV which is bigger than my living room? I hate to say it but not all that much. What is the difference if

I demand more square inches of film or motor? After all, for most of my work, I am sure that 6x7 would work just fine, in the same way that my neighbors could probably do fine with moped.

Maybe an LF camera is good for picking up girls, but after you get the girl and get married, she often objects to the price of some of the accessories, not to mention how the bloody camera takes up lots of space, usually right where she wants to work.

Bill

Suuuure Jason. You NYC guys have it easy with enough room for a 5x7. My fifth floor Hoboken walk-up barely fits a 4x5. I won't even get into New Jersey's radioactive waste fogging my film . . .

 

Just kidding. I actually just got a second 5x7, but had to kick out my girlfriend to make room for it.

God, what an annoying thread. Allow me to add to it. Terence, your name sounds Irish but single malt is not called scotch in Scotland, nor here in the US where we female 6x9-shooting, Honda Civic-driving photographers drink it -- it's whisky. Get with the program.

 

Jason, your analogy between camera format and vehicle size is brilliant. Thank you.

 

Everybody, I am shocked that LF photographers, who perhaps value the character of place more than normal humans, do not see the Satanic relationship between vehicle size and loss of the sense of place in America. Suburban sprawl, anyone? Requiring more acres of parking, higher parking garages, wider streets? Blocking sight lines on city sidewalks? Living in your car?

 

Don't even get me started on how dangerous those high & wide SUVs make driving for everyone, and how they increase congestion everywhere....

 

Off to pour a wee dram of Bowmore Darkest,

Sandy

this just in,

 

it's as easy to market shadetree coffee at six bux per cup to flinchy hippies as it is selling SUV's to yuppy soccer moms. and either or harms ner helps like you've been told it does. by the way, i drive a gigantic guzzling suburban... but then again, i live out west a ways and you'll often find me bobbing about violently on locked hubs. so i'll blame the lay of the land instead of one of you dipshits.

 

i'd like to say i could do without it... but uh, try explaining to my mom why i couldn't make it home fer xmas because my little, efficient part-time 4wd crv got high-centered on a 5 foot drift.

 

as fer greenhouse? well, go looking at FANB temps over the last 50 years... you'll find that yer buying what they're selling.

 

while we're at it, let's market to the disenfranchised next... wouldn't that be original?

 

feh,

 

me

 

p.s. you know who really rags out those mesas? the preachy hoardes of mountain-biking little hippie/yuppie patagonia-wearin' freaks discarding ziplocs of homemade gorp out the windows of their cute little soobs. wake up white people... then move, as quickly as you can, back to yer countries of origin. we natives want you out, asap.

In defense of the Subaru Outback shown in the commercial, it is really a rather small vehicle, more like a station wagon with a slightly higher ground clearance and all wheel drive (all Subaru's have all wheel drive, even sedans).

 

Most Outbacks have 4 cyl engines, although a 6 cyl is available. Gas mileage is comparable to most sedans. The Subaru Outback is not really an SUV.