DSLRUsers.com

About buying once, and buying right?

It seems I'm not the only one who has that opinion.

SO true. Those prices are a bit cheap tho.

Excellent, and a light-hearted version of Thom Hogan's tripod discussion.

Makes me wonder what everyone's progression and investment has been?

For us:

1. P&S in 2003 or 2004 - $600
2. D200 + 50 1.8 + 17-35 2.8 + 80-200 2.8 in 2005
3. 85 1.5 in 2007 I think

Plus peripherals

But, in that time:

F90x
FE2
F + 55mm 1:1 macro (from DSLRUsers member)
Bronica + lenses

Very good read. True and funny !
Ive been thru too much gear to even mention !

Even if you start off buying quality, you can still get marooned by technical change or changes in your aspirations. If his example were a Nikon D2x about 3 years ago, it might not seem so flash in retrospect. I've gone through a lot of gear, often bought cheaply but not usually causing problems later due to quality. Let's see:

(1) First camera from age 10: Agfa Isolette (120 film). Quality OK, I think, I must find and scan some of those one day. Not sure what happened to the camera.

(2) Pentax screw mount: Pentax SV + 50mm lens; later also Cosina body that died. May have bought an extra lens or two. Though the Pentax itself was OK this was largely a dead end. Ignored advice on two separate occasion to purchase (1) a Nikkormat and (2) a Nikon rangefinder from 1950 or 51.

(3) Nikon manual focus film: Ended up with 5 bodies and 9 lenses. 4 of those lenses are still good quality even today, though manual; 3 of them have very good reviews from Bjorn Rorslett and one is too rare to have reviews. 2 were poor and 2 were zooms that were good in their time, probably not so acceptable today. One was a 600mm mirror lens that I sold, probably not acceptable quality today. Cameras made obselete by digital and lenses somewhat obselete by autofocus.

(4) 35mm panorama: Widelux panorama camera. Contained plastic parts so periodically needed repair but quality OK even today. Largely made obselete by digital.

(5) TLR: Rollieflex TRL, tessar lens, 1937. Still fine quality today should I get round to using it.

(6) 5x4: Two bodies (Nagaoka field camera and Arca-Swiss monorail) and 5 lenses. Also 6x7 back. Lenses mainly from 60s but potential 5x4 image quality still better than any 35mm DSLR including D3x. Made somewhat obselete by the ease of digital. I'd have to get back into the mode.

(7) 6x17: Gaoersi panorama camera. Used one of my 5x4 lenses and bought another. Quality as for 5x4. May get back to it.

(8) Digicams: At this stage I did't want to get a DSLR because I could see the technology was not stable, so I got a Panasomic FZ20 and later an FZ50. I learned a lot about post-processing to deal with noise.

(9) DSLRs: Two bodies and 10 lenses. One of those is a manual lens that I later replaced with an autofocus one, another is a midrange zoom I got to see whether I would use it (and I don't) and one is one of my old manual lenses (16mm f3.5 fisheye).

That makes a total of 17 cameras and 34 lenses. Of those:
- 1 camera (& lens) lost? (don't remember)
- 1 camera died (and was inferior quality)
- 6 cameras made obselete by digital
- 5 more cameras made somewhat obselete by digital
- 18 lenses made somewhat obselete by digital
- between 2 and 7 of those lenses also obselete due to quality
- 2 cameras were a deliberate stop gap measure and somewhat obselete due to quality (as expected)
- 2 cameras and 9 lenses remain current

So not much of that is purchases that became problematic because the quality proved to be poor. Technological change has been a much more telling factor, especially the development of high-quality large-sensor digital and autofocus. Most of my film equipment is not so much obselete but inconvenient.

A D700 and an 85mm f1.4G sounds very impressive today as would have a Nikon FE and an 85mm f1.8 AI converted in 1972 (no 85mm f1.4 then and hardly any zooms). I still have two FEs and an 85mm f1.8AI'd but I haven't used them for a long time.

In 2048, a D700 and 85mm f1.4G may be as good as it is now but how useful will it be to the people of that time? Will holography have taken over? Will there be micro cameras that don't need cards? Will the earth's magnetic poles have swapped polarity and wiped out all electronic instruments, bringing a new surge of popularity to the camera obscura?

There's always the Holga argument that "who cares about technology?". Apart from that, sure, spending up on cheap stuff is likely to be a handicap as well as a delusion yet spending lots on current technology gear could prove to be a delusion as well.

And then, there's one thing you can't buy anyway - which is "Vision".

Oh this is a depressing topic...but it made me smile...

2004
- choice go digital or SLR....went digital (Kodak CX7430)

2004-2007
- shoot sporadically with Kodak CX7430, but never really happy with results

2007
- looking at Fuji S9600 as a step up from Kodak
- Bought Nikon D40x + 18-135 + SB-400(Aug)
- Purchased Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
- Purchased Nikon F80D + Nikon 28-80G
- Purchased Tamron 28-105 f/2.8
- Sold Nikon D40x + 18-135, purchased D300 (Nov)


2008
- Purchased Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 + 70-300mm (Feb)
- Purchased Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 + SB-800 (Mar)
- Purchased SB-600 (Jul)
- Added Fuji F100fd
- Purchased Sigma 180mm f/3.5 (Sept)
- Purchased FM2n (Oct)
- Purchased Nikon 70-200VR (Dec)
- Purchased Fuji S5 Pro (cant remember when but it was in 08)

2009
- Purchased Nikon Ai 135mm f/2.8
- Purchased D60 (Jul)
- Purchased Tokina 10-17 (Jul)

2010
- Purchased Nikon 35mm f/1.8 (Jan)
- Purchased Sony CyberShot TX5 (Mar)
- Purchased F80 + Nikon 60 f/2.8 (Jun)
- Purchased Nikon 16-85VR (Jul)
- Purchased Voigtlander 20mm f/3.5 (Nov)

So in the space of 3 years I have accumulated six SLR bodies (3 digital, 3 film) and 14 lenses.....11 of which get used regularly, and 3 compact cameras, this does not include the D40X kit that was sold off.

However, I have throughly enjoyed the journey and although there are a few bits and pieces that I shouldnt have bought/sold I dont think I would have done it any other way. The D300 has been my mainstay for three full years now, and I am glad that I bought it when I did, hopefully it will continue to serve me for another year or two until the arrival of the D800.

The bad news? I am still looking to add to this small arsenal of lenses....24/35/85 1.4G....14-24 2.8

oh I forgot to add the Fuji Instax Mini 7s (the original Polaroid 300) purchased in 2008

I agree with the 'buying once and buying right' in principle.
However, it's hard to agree with the response 'George' got without knowing what he originally asked...
Maybe he isn't looking to move further than the P&S cameras and all he wants is something that takes photos. He might not care about shutter speeds, ISO or aperture. All he might want is to push a button and get a photo

Anyway... I'm a pup in the photography game compared to most of you so my timeline will be a little different to most...

In 1996 (age 16) I brought a cheap P&S film camera for use on holidays, fishing and hunting trips etc. Point and click. That's as much thought as I gave it.

2003 (age 23) I brought my first new car and wanted something better than the P&S to take some photos of my car and to snap some shots off at the racetrack. My local camera store told me that film was still the way to go (because they were trying to offload their film cameras) and I stupidly took their advice and purchased a Pentax MZ-60 twin lens kit.
6 months later it dawned on me that buying and processing film was starting to add up and I started researching digital cameras myself rather than take advice from a store again.

January 2004 I brought a Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ-10 because it had a good focal length range and had received good reviews on DPReview. I brought that camera and a 100mb SD card for $1,100

Fast forward to 2008 and the FZ-10 had served me well over it's time, but the battery was now knackered making the camera unusable.
At the same time we were planning our trip to Europe in 2010 and I decided I need a new camera and time to learn how to use it before our trip.
After some research I settled on the current (at the time) Canon 450D twin lens kit.

I didn't jump straight into using the 450D a lot at first and it's now 2009, but I eventually started to experiment, read books and websites, joined this forum and that's were my interest in photography was born. At this stage I was realising I wanted more than to just point and shoot. I wanted to create something.

From mid 2009 until now I've been in the express lane. I brought the...
- Canon 50mm f/1.8II
- Canon 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5
- Canon 580 EXII Flash
- Upgraded to a Canon 7D...
I was discovering the ISO limitation of my 450D and at the same time realising that photography has become a hobby for me which I'm really enjoying. So, I sold that 450D kit and the accessories.

I've read a lot on this forum and other places on the web that say that lenses last a lifetime and it's the bodies that wear out and need replacing. With that in mind I decided that any lens I brought would be the better quality units, so I've since purchased the...
- Canon 24-105mm f/4 L IS
- Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS
- Canon 100mm f/2.8 L IS Macro
And very recently the...
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS II, which I've yet to get the chance to try out.

For me the lens collection is complete. I can't think of anything else I'd want, or more importantly, use in addition to what I already have.

So, to tie all this back to my opening comment I guess it would be easy to say that I could've saved myself some money and gone straight to a DSLR, but at the time I didn't have the money or the interest in photography to need equipment of that level and it didn't suit my needs back then anyway.

Since the 450D I think I have followed the 'buying once and buying right' philosophy.

Murray Foote wrote:Even if you start off buying quality, you can still get marooned by technical change or changes in your aspirations. If his example were a Nikon D2x about 3 years ago, it might not seem so flash in retrospect.

I believe that he covered that in his blog posting, in that he qualified his nominated selections based upon the currently available choices, and made mention of the the fact that these will change over time as new models are released.

But apart from that, what technical changes have there been that have not been foreseen, and thus could/should/would have been planned for?

My cameras ... where to start?

I can recall having a Kodak 127, sans flash. I remember using it at national fitness camps (!) (fat lot of good they did me) and being pissed that the guy next to me had one with flash!

I can recall having a Ham'n'Eggs 110 and/or 126, a couple of Polaroids of various persuasions, a Voigtlander ...

And then I finally got my first SLR, a Praktica LTL, with a 50mm f/1.7 or thereabouts. To keep it company I purchased a Zenit, and thus I had a backup body.

I moved into Nikons in the mid-late '70s, with a FM and a FE. 50mm f/1.8 Series E, 35mm (Series E I think), 35-70 which was replaced by a 43-86.

A Mamiya C330 found its way into my possession, that was replaced by a M645 (a dog of a camera) which was very quickly replaced - following the same fault occurring twice - by a Bronica ETRs, which I still have.

I then grabbed a couple of Canon A1s - superb camera - with 50mm, 35mm and 35-105mm glass ...

Nikon FA, F801, FE2 ... somewhere along the line an old Nikkormat with a 55mm Micro found its way to me ...

Nikkor 24mm f/2.8, 300mm f/4, 70-210, 35-70 (I replaced most lenses with the AF versions when the 801 came along)

And also a beautiful Nagaoka Cherrywood 4x5 camera. If you really want to have fun shooting, try one of these.

In digital .. a very old Kodak, a Casio, a Coolpix 950, a Coolpix 5000 ...

Nikon D70, D200

Nikkor 18-70 kit, 50mm f/1.4, 24-120VR, 80-400VR, 85mm f/1.4

Sigma 10-20

Canon 30D with kit and 50mm f/1.8

Nikon D300 ....

I think that just about covers my still camera purchases .....

I still have many of the filum cameras, and, I think, all of the digitals.

gstark wrote:what technical changes have there been that have not been foreseen, and thus could/should/would have been planned for?

not sure if d3s type iso performance would have been thought possible a few years ago.

Rooz wrote:

gstark wrote:what technical changes have there been that have not been foreseen, and thus could/should/would have been planned for?

not sure if d3s type iso performance would have been thought possible a few years ago.

Chris,

Why not? the question is "do you think that's as good as it will get?"

Without turning this thread into a "what the future holds" one, I don't: I can see better ISO senstitivity, and far greater dynamic range within a sensor, and better AF performance, for instance.

While 1080p video performance is quite good, I think we can look forward to major improvements in that realm too.

Faster data transfer speeds. More, and perhaps "better", in-camera processing.

Basically, as good as we have things today, there will still be better tomorrow.

I look at the D3100 and D7000, and I'm left in eager anticipation of the next cycle of top-end Nikons, for instance.

gstark wrote:

Murray Foote wrote:Even if you start off buying quality, you can still get marooned by technical change or changes in your aspirations. If his example were a Nikon D2x about 3 years ago, it might not seem so flash in retrospect.

I believe that he covered that in his blog posting, in that he qualified his nominated selections based upon the currently available choices, and made mention of the the fact that these will change over time as new models are released.
But apart from that, what technical changes have there been that have not been foreseen, and thus could/should/would have been planned for?

It's true that you could have got marooned buying a D2x and then wondering what to do when when the full-sensor bodies came out but the point I was making is better expressed at the bottom of my post:

I wrote:A D700 and an 85mm f1.4G sounds very impressive today as would have a Nikon FE and an 85mm f1.8 AI converted in 1972 (no 85mm f1.4 then and hardly any zooms). I still have two FEs and an 85mm f1.8AI'd but I haven't used them for a long time.

In 2048, a D700 and 85mm f1.4G may be as good as it is now but how useful will it be to the people of that time? Will holography have taken over? Will there be micro cameras that don't need cards? Will the earth's magnetic poles have swapped polarity and wiped out all electronic instruments, bringing a new surge of popularity to the camera obscura?

There's always the Holga argument that "who cares about technology?". Apart from that, sure, spending up on cheap stuff is likely to be a handicap as well as a delusion yet spending lots on current technology gear could prove to be a delusion as well.

I was comparing a D700 in 2010 with an FE in 1972. From that perspective, the main unforseeable changes, were autofocus and digital. Model changes to me means incremental changes which doesn't cover those. Autofocus has made almost all my old manual focus lenses obselete, though that may not have been the case if my predominant usage were landscape. Digital has made all my old 35mm film bodies obselete.

Some might include the rise of zooms to mainly displace primes but that's not a factor for me because I mainly use primes for reason of image quality in low light. The low light performance of the D3s, while important to me, is more of an incremental change I think since digital passed film in low light capabilities quite a few years ago. It is clear this is continuing and will have implications for specification of lenses in the future.

The one manual focus lens I still use is the 16mm f3.5 fisheye, released in 1973 though mine is from 1977. Autofocus is hardly necessary at such a wide angle, the quality is as good as or better than subsequent models and it is more resistant to flare. I bought it second-hand, as with all my purchases in the film era.

The article suggests that you need to spend more to obtain good quality. This is only true to the extent that the rapid technological change of the past 20 years, particularly with the rise and essentially the triumph of digital, has lead to people buying new. It's only with the D3 and D300, I think, that there are digital cameras you don't need to replace in a year or two.

The digital technology is now I think mature and the rate of change is likely to ease off. For example, although more compact alternatives will continue, sensor sizes cannot rise too much above the D3x without all 35mm lenses becoming obselete. Although relatively obselete due to autofocus, my old lenses are still mainly fine quality because I generally bought good Nikon models. Buying second-hand will increasingly become a viable option again for people to cheaply obtain good quality digital cameras and lenses.

I recall way back in the 90's an article about a professional Australian photographer who invested $150,000 in digital photographic technology. This included a KODAK/Nikon digital camera of about 1.2 MP worth around $9000....the latest and most powerful Apple computer with almost 1 GB of ram, (it was the RAM that cost in those days), and a digital glicee printer of sorts. He was going to change the face of photography in Australia. Within 3 years all he had was a room full of worthless junk. Ya gotta know when step in and ya gotta know when to bale out.

gstark wrote:

Rooz wrote:

gstark wrote:what technical changes have there been that have not been foreseen, and thus could/should/would have been planned for?

not sure if d3s type iso performance would have been thought possible a few years ago.

Chris,

Why not? the question is "do you think that's as good as it will get?"

i dont disagree at all. i dunno, maybe i just wasnt paying attention, but 2 or 3 years ago, iso1600 clarity and useable iso6400 was like a holy grail. i dont remember anyone saying that iso102k was even feasible. i dont think anything is impossible now.