freebies

Our policy on freebies, loaners and special press discounts is simple. If a product is good, we will say so. If it isn't, we won't praise it because we have been bribed to do so. The only distortion that freebies introduce is that we get to use equipment we could not otherwise afford -- and, of course, that pictures taken with that equipment appear in our books and magazine articles and elsewhere.

We won't pretend, for example, that we could afford to buy Alpas at anything like the full price. On the other hand, because we can use them, we know that they are stunningly good cameras, and if you can afford one (and want one), we would wholeheartedly encourage you to buy one.

Great Wall of China

Frances used her Alpa 12S/WA with 35/5.6 Rodenstock Apo-Grandagon and a yellow Tiffen filter, shooting just after dawn on Kodak Tri-X and printing on Ilford Multigrade Warmtone.

Contrariwise, although we have to give our Contax (manual focus SLR) loaners back, we would have kept them if we could. We have never seen better results from any 35mm SLR. You can see a lot of Contax pictures in Quality in Photography.

Actually, there is one qualification to add. If people are really, really unpleasant, we won't promote their products as much as we might, no matter how good the product is. We won't actually say that a product is bad when it isn't. We'll just mention it when we have to, and keep quiet the rest of the time. And we certainly won't use the product: we don't want to be beholden to unpleasant people.

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