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G'day Gents,

In another life I was a qualified commercial/industrial photographer. I had all the stuff needed to run a small colour print lab, that is, all but colour film processing. Things changed, life happened & I now find myself back picking up a camera (digital) for fun & not work.

I sold off the colour print processor but kept the rest. It's now taking up valuable room & I need to divest myself of all the stuff. There is a DeVere 504 Color enlarger with lenses to 4X5 & all the neg carriers from 110 - 5X4, digital timers & the usual stuff that goes with a production darkroom.

My question is; Is it worth selling or should I donate it to Griffith Uni arts dept? (where I got my qualifications)

Cheers

Major Panic

Hi, and welcome.

MajorPanic wrote:G'day Gents,

Don't you want to talk to the ladies here? They're really very nice, and damn good photographers.

And most of them don't bite.

Too hard.

In another life I was a qualified commercial/industrial photographer. I had all the stuff needed to run a small colour print lab, that is, all but colour film processing. Things changed, life happened & I now find myself back picking up a camera (digital) for fun & not work.

Sounds very familiar, although I also had some film processing stuff, but not of a commercial nature.

But shooting 5x4 is just so much fun. I was tempted to buy a Toyo monorail on a recent trip to HKG. Very tempted, but (for a disgusting change) my good sense got the better of me.

My question is; Is it worth selling or should I donate it to Griffith Uni arts dept? (where I got my qualifications)

There's a couple of questions here, and a couple of other potential issues too. As you're a new member, I need to direct your attention to our FAQ. It contains some very valuable and helpful information, and I think you may find a couple of points in it to be of great value. That (hopefully) deals with the potential issues, so let's get back to your questions.

We're really talking about niche equipment here. What you're describing is quality equipment, but finding a buyer might require more than a reasonable amount of time, so, how much of a hurry are you in to sell it, and, at what sort of price? I'm not asking you to actually put a price here (and, referring to the FAQ, that might even piss me off ), but asking you more in terms of simply considering what's the real (market) value of this gear, and you need to consider that against what it's real (or perceived) value to you might be.

These answers also need to be coloured by the fact that not only is this niche equipment, it's also verging on obsolete, no matter how much we may love it.

And that creates one other potential issue for you: many schools are also moving mostly to digital, and thus even a donation to a school might not be quite as easy as we might like to think it should be. Leigh's just told me that NAS is moving to full digital, for instance.

But those questions essentially distill back to ....

How urgently do you need the space?

and

What's your real need and time frame for the funds such a sale might realise?

Judging by the fact that you seem willing to forego any funds for this by donating this to a Uni, the answer to the second question seems to be one biased towards ambivalence, but it's your call, of course.

If that's an incorrect assessment on my part, then the answer is probably that, for you, it will be worth trying to sell it, but otherwise, a donation such as you're suggesting seems, to me, to be a great idea, if, of course, it fits with the school's directions.

Cheerz.