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Contax contacts in London UK

G

Guest

Hello all.

I'm going to London for 2 weeks. Does anyone know any camera shop or Contax specialist in Central London? I'd like to pay a visit there. Furthermore if anyone can give me any tips / tricks and thoughts to photography in London in winter i would be eternally grateful. Thanks in advance.

John.
 
Hi,

visit Camden market on the weekend. It is a huge flea market offering lots of opportunity for good photos... I have been there some years ago and did not have my camera with me... a pity.

Regards
Clemens
 
> Hi, As a Brit who now lives in the USA, I can say that I used to find a company called (deleted by admin) although I don't think cameras prices in general in the UK are anywhere near as low as here. I check them out when I go back but usually just to get stuff I can't find here. As to subjects, one of my favourite is St Paul's on a very early misty morning. The lights and the architecture peek through the mist - eery but beautiful. Also the morning is good as there's less traffic. If buildings is your thing there are simply hundreds - The Houses of Parliament late at night are stunning. If the light is on in Big Ben it means the MP's are still sitting. There are lots of interesting buildings to see around W1 - grab a tube map and get off at Picadilly Circus or St James and just wander. If you prefer people, I echo Camden Market, ( a bit pseudo scruffy, lots of antiques/junk, good place to buy a leather jacket!) also Picadilly Circus for paintings along the railing type thing, Petticoat Lane for real gritty Londoners, also Portobello Road for a fabulous antique market. Any questions please don't hesitate - and if you get that St Paul's shot please send it to me. I haven't manged it myself yet - one day! Regards, Alison
 
Dear members,

I think it is not that difficult to follow the rules in this forum. We do not want to have dealer ercommendations publicely posted in a thread. I think this should be clear by now.

You can VERY EASY send a private message with the integrated message system of this forum. You just click on the name in the posting and then on the enveloppe. This should be the only way to recommend dealers.

I will delete all recommendations in the forum since I can not verify whether it is cheap advertising or a real recommendation.

Thanks for your understanding

Dirk
 
Understood, Dirk.

Thanks for the notes, all. Will try to get St Pauls for you, Alison. No one else in this group from London?

Btw, i understand London during Xmas time to be overcast (therefore low contrast), gloomy and "blue". Any thoughts as to film stock to take along? I'd assume 400 ISO print film? I'm using G2 (if it matters).
 
> I think it is not that difficult to follow the rules in this forum. We> do not want to have dealer rcommendations publicely posted in a> thread. I think this should be clear by now. > > You can VERY EASY send a private message with the integrated message> system of this forum. You just click on the name in the posting and> then on the enveloppe. This should be the only way to recommend > dealers.> I will delete all recommendations in the forum since I can not verify> whether it is cheap advertising or a real recommendation.

With all due respect I think this paranoia about advertising is unwarrented - if advertising is done blatantly , members themselves will soon tell the offender where to get off...... Anyway , I did not , for the record , recommend anybody - I merely said "they are there , I once went there and they carry a range of Contax gear" . How does that constitute a "recommendation"?? I live more than 10000kms from the shops concerned....... Steve
 
Stephen,

it was not meant to sound angry. it is just tough as an admin to draw a line. if I would not be hyper-critical with this, the forum would look a lot different by now.

many mailing lists died because of misuse, insultings, profanities and spam. I try to make defending ahaed. Sometimes this will look paranoia
happy.gif


The Contaxinfo site has now over 2370 registered members. We are the biggest Contax community on the internet. This sites is generating huge traffic in MB and Page Impressions per month.

You can imagine that many people will try to use this audiance for advertising, which they can not reach that easy (and cheap) otherwise.

I do not mind advertising as long as it is clear stated as such and the advertiser pays an appropriate price to reduce the cost of this site. This summer there have been several attempts to do hidden advertising for free. This is why I pay attnetion as far as I am able to do this beside my job.

Dirk
 
Hi Dirk,

As someone in IT, I totally concur! Keep up the great work. Maintaining this kind of site is not only time consuming but tres expensive.

Which reminds me, I have to make a contribution, then on the other hand, if you get enough paid advertisements, even that won't be necessary ;-)

Thanks!

David
 
Steve, I agree with you. While spam is evil, policy on contaxinfo is unworkable.

Firstly, there is one policeman (Dirk) and many posters. This situation will not scale to a larger, more successful forum like dpreview.com.

Secondly, what constitutes spam is a personal matter. Usenet readers have kill-files to allow offensive topics or posters to be suppressed. I'm older than Uncle Dirk, and don't need to be "protected". Forum software should provide a kill-file facility: as a systems programmer, I can assure you this is no big deal.

A public forum is an effective way to disseminate info widely. Private e-mail benefits two parties, while the rest of the forum remains oblivious.

With the sums of money required for Contax equipment, purchasing experiences of others has real value. Dealer recommendations, like recommendations for the equipment itself, should be directly accessible to the members.

I contribute regularly to photographic forums on the Web, but relatively little to contaxinfo. One reason is the dealer discussion policy. If Dirk wants his endeavor to succeed, he needs forum contributors like me. I suggest he study the workings of dpreview, very carefully.
 
David,

"...Which reminds me, I have to make a contribution, then on the other hand, if you get enough paid advertisements, even that won't be necessary
happy.gif
"

I am in the process of thinking about better possibilities to finance the site, so that I can also offer more features and to reduce the workload, which is too much for me alone beside my job.

Paid advertising could be one possibility, but only if it would not be too aggressive to the members. I do not like at all the Yahoo-Groups-way of advertising. Similar on other free sites with tons of pop-up ads. I think this makes a forum uncomfortable to use.

Another question is, whether the members are feeling comfortable with "non aggressive" ads. In the past I had the opinion, that this would kill the attractivity, but as I am reading now, members seem not to mind if there is some kind of advertising. As long as it is not to extreme.

But even if I find a way of "nice" paid advertising, it will never cover all the costs. So the donation or subscriptions will be still needed. Since a few weeks I offer also more benefits for subscribers. This is more disc-space in the photo-gallery and a higher file-size limit. More benefits will come in the future. This all for a very low monthly fee of 2 USD. See for more details the "subscribe" navigation bar.

If there is no problem with the members, another idea could be to talk with Kyocera and Zeiss itself. At the end of the day they benefit the most of this community. It is the best marketing for them and finally they get to know what their costumers really want. If I read all the ND postings, it makes sense for Kyocera to read the postings and learn from them - if they are interested at all what their costumers are thinking.

If you think about it, we basically give them "instructions" how to build products, which we will definitely buy later on since we "developped" them. The best R&D I can think of.

The more I think about it, the more I find this idea quiet "sexy"
happy.gif


Anyway, I need some time to think about different ways, since I can not continue like this as in the past.

As Rico mentioned in his last posting, I do not like the role of a police-officer against spam. There must be a better solution. But Rico:

"This situation will not scale to a larger, more successful forum like dpreview.com."

I am not sure whether we do not compare here apples and oranges. dpreview is a great site, concentrated on all digital cameras, no matter which brandname. So the number of potential users will be logically a multiple of a one-brand-community, especially in a niche-market as Contax.

As far as I know, dpreview is the fulltime job of the owner. He lives from the paid-ad income. Of course he can then also put more work into it. But I am not planning to give up my job for this.

Any ideas and feedback of the different possibilities are welcome. I have to make a decision within the next weeks about this, so I would be very interested in your opinion about this.

Thanks

Dirk
 
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