B&H Catalog

So today I received the B&H catalog. Visions of holidays past ran through my mind. Who else remembers the JC Penney, Montgomery Ward, and Sears holiday catalogs? For those who are a little younger, Toys R Us used to insert a huge flyer into the newspapers. There is something about having a catalog in front of you making comparisons very easy...as well as increasing desires for things we don't have.

The first thing I did was to look up tripods. I shouldn't have traded in my Benro carbon fiber tripod because it would have been fine to leave in the car. The other day I needed to use a slower shutter speed than I could achieve handheld so I pulled my 20 year old Velbon tripod out of the car. Let's just say it isn't quite capable of supporting the weight of my current gear. :beguiled: Had I realized I would need a tripod, I have better ones at home.

For those who received the catalog, what did you search for first? If you didn't yet receive yours, what do you think you'd look for? Is anyone else getting anxious waiting for Black Friday? :shame:

nikonpup said:

i looked for one with larger print
did you get a 2019 catalog?

Click to expand...

Some of the fonts for specs are pretty small in this catalog. I wanted to reach for reading glasses only to remember I don't own any. On the spine, it is listed as Winter 2019.

The internet has squashed much of the catalog magic for me but I still enjoy paper catalogs. I flip through them looking for something that I didn't know I needed or I didn't know existed. Its hard to soak it all in when you browse for nothing in particular online. Nothing on my photography list right now, but that could change with a good catalog.

I enjoyed all the big name catalogs when I was a kid. Sears was the best. First the holiday Wish Book catalogs full of toys and games, but then in the mid 70's and beyond it was the Sears tool catalog and the various sporting goods editions they produced that I looked forward to getting my hands on.

The Pennys, Sears and Wards Christmas catalogs were so much fun when I was a kid.

Print catalogs still have the advantage of being able to see a large number of products all on one page. I like seeing every lens a certain company makes all on one page, or all tripods available from any company of three or four pages, etc.

You may need to sign up for the Rural King catalog.

I found that just a little shovel work can completely cut an armored 5 pair phone/internet/cable tv cable.

Spent a long morning in the dirt splicing in a fix for the two active pairs.

I used to enjoy perusing the ads in the back of Popular Photography and Modern Photography, until they all started printing "...Call" in the price column for every item. I always wondered, "What's the point of that? Why even take out the ad?"