Pay Per View - Part One - The List of Shame

on December 29, 2019
Or how to horrify yourself with a pencil and a piece of paper. In my foolish youth ( as opposed to my foolish old age...) I started to play with 35mm amateur film photography. Then I found ways to enter the photo trade and money started to come back to me. Of course I re-invested it in more photo gear and in time acquired far more things than needed. As was my wont, I exchanged some goods for other goods, paying the difference in cash. Does this sound familiar to you? Did you do the same? Are you still doing it? Well, pause to remember some of the bits of equipment that you bought and then hardly used. If you were a model of efficiency and frugality, never wasting a penny and getting value on every purchase, you may draw yourself up with haughty pride. The rest of us are going to be depressed here for a bit. Depressed? Yes, because we wasted either money or opportunity. We let ourselves be seduced with the idea of change and never used the goods we bought to their full capability. We did not shoot our cameras till the shutter curtains broke and we did not use our lenses until the last element fell out of the barrel. Worse - many of us bought goods that did not shoot 100 shots before they were traded away or forgotten in an old camera bag. Shame on us. The excuse that there was a cost in film and developing actually did not apply. If we could afford the camera or lens, and then the change of camera or lens, we should have been able to afford the ammunition for it... Now - what to do about being depressed? Well, get out that pencil and paper and write down what you own at present. Then write down what you paid for it. Then write down the sorts of pictures that you'd like to take with each bit. Now write down how many actual images you've taken with each bit. You can search your EXIF data to find this out if you've time. You may be surprised to see how many, or how few, images your Flapomar 19-72mm f:1.3 lens has actually made. If you're working with this lens, you might be equally horrified to see how few of those images sold. I'll admit to an incautious purchase of a 50mm Pentax macro lens in the 1960's that probably shot less than 5 images. Mind you. I'd treasure it now as I shoot close-ups but then you can't remember the future nearly as well as you can predict the past... Well, that's an impressive list you've made - and on New Year's Eve as well. Almost suggests making a set of resolutions for tomorrow, doesn't it? So read tomorrow's column and see...
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