Locals may know that the only A - Z camera/photography store left in the metro was Epperson Photo & Video at 30th & North May. Well, Mr. Epperson is now 72 years old and has chosen to retire. Effective July 1st, Epperson Photo & Video is Bedford Camera & Video. Bedford has 5 locations in Arkansas and, now, one in OKC. The old Epperson employees are still there, but there are a few new employees as well.
The Bedford store is very un-changed from Epperson's. The main difference seems to be that Bedford employees wear Hawai'ian shirts and leis. Anyway, one of the employees told me that Bedford intends to open a store in Edmond as well as one in the Moore/Norman area. That would be nice for Norman, as all of the local photo/video stores seem to have closed. I suspect they were victims of the digital age - digital photography eliminated much of the developing/processing business and the internet eliminated much of the hardware sales by brick-and-mortar stores. (Anyone remember Wolf Camera & Video?)
You can go to the Bedford website by typing in the address: Bedfords dot com.
We'll see what happens.

FYI - There is a great camera shop in Yukon. Baker Photo and Video. They are a full line photo shop akin to Eppersons. Not quite as large, but they have most everything. I go there more than I ever have gone to Eppersons. Check it out.

FYI - There is a great camera shop in Yukon. Baker Photo and Video. They are a full line photo shop akin to Eppersons. Not quite as large, but they have most everything. I go there more than I ever have gone to Eppersons. Check it out.

I agree, I preferred Baker's to Epperson's. However, I order almost exclusively from B&H or (when not available from B&H) from Amazon (as long as the item is sold and shipped by Amazon - great return policy). Just ordered another
Canon XA10 (my camcorder of choice) and external Blu-Ray burner from B&H.

I always wondered if that location - 3110 N. May - was still a good spot for that store. The last few times I went there it started to look as though things were getting a bit "ragged," lots of the CD print machines broken, inventory seemed a bit spotty. No one overarching thing, but just a sense that things weren't being paid as close attention as they had over the years. Wonder where they'll open in Moore...?

Heck, I remember when Mr. Epperson did the commercials, and later when (I presume) his daughter took over...

IMO Epperson's inventory was bleak for awhile now and if you even mentioned better Internet prices they just blew you off. I don't mind paying 10% more if the service is really good, but it wasn't.

Yes, that's the daughter. Never could stand her. The only good thing was watching the employees roll their eyes at her when she walked around. She was a sorority girl at UCO and never grew out of that mindset.

Bought my new camera from "Bedfords" a couple of weeks ago. The employees seemed to think that it was a good thing, and to expect a lot from the new owners. MUCH bigger inventory (this is already evident), an actual return policy (GO FIGURE! Epperson's never had one worth mentioning without spitting), and better pricing. I know that my new camera was right in line with Canon's pricing all over the internet, so paying the tax on it was well worth it to me (still came out about the same as buying from B&H or Adorama).

I was pretty impressed by the whole thing, compared to my experiences with Epperson's of old.