I know not how others feel, but for myself I am getting awful tired of being treated as a third world country when it comes to shipments bound for Alaska. This is a problem that has transpired for years, catalog sales, distributors, and dealerships view Alaska as a foreign country. They do not even recognize the U.S. Postal Department, even though this self supporting former government agency still receives large subsidies from our tax dollars. Very few companies choose to utilize the shipping methods of the postal service, instead they choose the two majors, Fed Ex and UPS. Just a little prattle prior to the story behind the headline.
In the fall of 1967, my wife and I purchased the "state of the art" motion picture equipment, the superior model of the Kodak Super 8mm movie camera and projector. Thirty nine years has since elapsed, the camera still lays in some storage box in the basement but we do have miles of Super 8mm film. Prior to graduating to the new innovations, we captured many of our early trips, our children, family members, and historic events on super 8mm.
A couple of weeks ago, the Golden Granny took it upon herself to retrieve all of our tapes, set up a small dark room in the closet and transpose the Super 8mm film to her digital movie camera and eventually to a DVD. We had taken the time over the years to splice all the film ffrom the little fifty foot spools to the large 8 inch spools that hold 400 feet of film. We have fourteen such reels to transfer to digital film. In preparation, she retrieved the "old" Super 8 movie projector and screen from the crawl space and got her dark room all set up. Keep in mind that we have not watched this film or used the equipment for the past fifteen years. She spent the first hour, making an attempt to feed the film through the projector without success. Having a great memory, I took over from her and spent the next two hours attempting to complete the same task. Together, we finally succeeded, although it took only forty five minutes to remember how to rewind the film.
For those that are a little older and remember the Super 8 technology, the projectors do have one weak point, the projection lamp! We discussed the possibility of loosing the service of the lamp with as much film that she had to transfer. The first 400 foot reel was captured on the digital camera, although "jumpy" the pictures are priceless! However, part way though the second reel, her worse fears became reality, the bulb on the projector burned out.
Now the problem exists, where do you find a filament bulb that was produced for a projector forty years ago? The size of th
e bulb is a DJL , 150 Watt , 120 Volt and manufactured in Canada. After contemplating the situation for a few days, the only choice I could see was the Internet. Not expecting much to happen, I typed in "djl projector lamp" into the search engine. Much to my surprise, I had several thousand hits! Flipping through several web sites, comparing prices on my "antique" bulb, I finally settled on a photography company in New York City. Much to my surprise, they were only open six days a week, with Saturday being the day that they were closed! What is with that? The cost of the bulb was $24.95, in my mind that is pretty cheap for an antique!
e bulb is a DJL , 150 Watt , 120 Volt and manufactured in Canada. After contemplating the situation for a few days, the only choice I could see was the Internet. Not expecting much to happen, I typed in "djl projector lamp" into the search engine. Much to my surprise, I had several thousand hits! Flipping through several web sites, comparing prices on my "antique" bulb, I finally settled on a photography company in New York City. Much to my surprise, they were only open six days a week, with Saturday being the day that they were closed! What is with that? The cost of the bulb was $24.95, in my mind that is pretty cheap for an antique! We held off from ordering it until Monday, while enjoying my morning coffee, I recalled the last time I had bought a bulb for the projector was from a photography shop in Anchorage down on 4th Avenue, which was about twenty years ago. I put a call through to them, a very nice guy and I explained my situation about looking for an old bulb. He left the phone for a bit, upon returning he said, "yep, we got that!" In fact he had two of them. Contemplating which one of my daughters that I was going to call to retrieve the bulbs and mail them to us, he asked a simple question, "wanna know how much they cost"? Considering that might be a good idea, I consented to his question. "Well, the cost of the bulb is $53.00 but if you take them both you can have them for $41.00 a piece". Hey, that is some kind of markdown, only $16.05 higher than New York City. Not wanting to task my daughters in the retrieval process, I thanked him for his time and consideration. All of a sudden now, my antique bulb is not very rare.
Returning to the Internet, I commenced my order from the New York Company, cost of the bulb $24.95, no Post Office in Alaska, have to be shipped UPS 2nd Day, cost $22.50! Per bulb, it is still cheaper to shop in New York. Increasing my order to, two bulbs, the freight remained the same so I got a real bargain!
With 2nd Day Express shipment, that means that we will get the bulbs in about five days and she will once again be set to record some real history. This experience should teach us all, you should never throw anything away, I am sure finding a Super 8 Projector would be more difficult than finding a bulb for one of them. I am grateful that we did not have "throw away" technology forty years ago.
For those interested, when the DVDs are completed, the entire set will be on sale for $79.95 plus freight. We will not be able to ship to any post office in Alaska, however, we can deliver them by special courier for a nominal fee plus mileage.
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