Resisting, and not resisting, photographic purchases
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I'm continuing to try my best, not always successfully, to avoid
buying more old camera gear. Not only that, but I'm forming concrete
plans to thin my collection down. It's not even supposed to *be*
a collection in any meaningful sense, but, well, things happen.
For the most part, I think I'm doing pretty well, but fate seems
to be tempting me regularly these days.
A few weeks ago I saw a Yashica LM TLR, in its leather case,
in a thrift-store for the equivalent of about 45 EUR. If it was
in working condition, that would be a pretty hefty underpricing.
I surprised and impressed myself by not even bothering to ask to
look at it. I was in the same store again a few days later and,
unsurprisingly, it was already gone. I hope whoever snapped it up
is enjoying it!
Back before I quite abruptly sold off my Canon AE-1 and associated
lenses in favour of a smaller, lighter and frankly better Pentax
ME-super, I had long harboured ambitions to upgrade to either a Canon
A-1 or an EF-1, but never stumbled across a good deal on either
(the EF-1, or "black beauty", is relatively rare). Naturally,
now that I have gotten rid of all my FD-mount lenses, last weekend
I stumbled, in a wonderfully eclectic second hand store which is
dangerously close to my home, upon a most improbable thing: a Canon
A-1, with a power-winder, and fitted, via an FD-to-M42 adaptor,
with a Super Takumar lens by Asahi!
It was nice to finally at least see an A-1 in the flesh and to
hold it. The shutter won't fire at all without a battery in there,
it seems, unlike any of my Pentax SLRs, so I didn't really get a
chance to experience the ergonomics and "feel" of winding on, etc.
This just underscored for me how happy I am with the move to less
battery-dependent gear.
I did buy an 85mm f/1.8 SMC Takumar lens from the same store.
It's not the most common focal length out there, I've never shot it
before, and it was cheap, so it was hard to resist. I regret it
perhaps very slightly - 85mm is a classic portrait focal length,
and I'm not good at portraits. I'm not averse to getting better,
but good portraiture is far less about suitable lenses than it
is about interaction with the subject, and there are vanishingly
few people I'm comfortable enough around to even give it a try,
so it seems unlikely that anything will come of it. But who knows.
In the worst case scenario I can likely very easily resell it for
at least what I paid. Probably I could have done the same with the
Yashica LM and the A-1 with winder, but I much prefer to leave finds
like that for somebody else who is likely to actually use the thing.
