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All this lens research to sell my old kit is making me kind of regretful. For the 70mm-210mm f3.5-4.5 zoom I have, I keep finding things like "wonderful lens design" and "a true bargain" and "look for it on eBay" (it's long been discontinued) and people kind of regretting upgrades to the L line and people making archives on Canon forums despite the lens not being available. Reference sites list it at $200 (+/- 25%) in near-mint.
Then you get to the 85mm f1.8 - yay, speedy - and I started remembering that the only time I ever even halfway liked shooting with the Elan was using this lens. And you see on eBay that it sells for $300, used - which is only $40 off new via mail-order in New York. Ultra-quiet, ultra-fast, and ultra-discreet, Best portrait lens in the world, a fantastic portrait lens, with jaw dropping sharpness at all apertures. The bokeh is also outstanding - creamy, buttery, milky, smooth. Excellent contrast, vivid colours, OUTSTANDING in the lab... at ALL aperture settings... and I'm thinking... I like photography. What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I selling these lenses?!
And then I remember that I haven't shot through them in, what, three years? Yeah. Three years.
Maybe four. But I think three.
So I spent some time thinking about this. Before I had the Elan - bought shortly before digitals got worthwhile, bad timing! - I had a full-metal-body full-manual SLR, like every good art-school student should. I had a really good 50mm (which, amusingly, sold for much more than I paid for it on eBay), a pretty good 135mm (and a doubler), a macro, a wide-angle, and a junky 55mm I only kept because you never know what could happen.
I loved shooting with that thing. I was super-fast with it - 2 frames per second manual-winding? CAN do sport. I hit 3fps at least once, when I didn't have to refocus. The body had a thing where you could compose with the aperture left wide open, click the aperture down to actual for preview, then shoot. Basically, it was a light tube, with film behind it. And because it was full-manual, it was built to be full-manual, and there were pleasantly few controls. Aperture and focus on the lens; shutter speed on the body; click to preview depth of field, click to shoot. That was it.
Then it died of a combination of old-age and battery-reference error (not mine; the reference replacement battery for one no longer made killed the light metre) and I thought it was time to upgrade. I surveyed the market extensively. I hated the Nikon control set a lot; I didn't like the Minolta series's limited lens set, tho' the lenses around were awfully nice; I wasn't interested in large-format (or large-format price tags), and the Canon had nice lenses available and the least annoying UI. Plus, the 100 (in Japan) a.k.a. the Elan (in the US) would let me override everything if I thought I needed to, so - the Elan it was. I refused the bundled 75-300mm zoom lens as a piece of junk, and negotiated for the faster (and clearly better even at the time) 70-210mm above instead. This, somewhat to my surprise, worked. (Again: quantity vs. quality. They still make a cheapy 75-300mm. They still make a nice 70-200, but in the L - professional - line only. But they don't make this lens anymore.)
And then I never liked shooting with it.
I didn't hate it. I thought it was just a matter of getting used to all the controls, and the approach, which was so different than the SLR I'd replaced. But it didn't really get any better with time. I shot trips to Baltimore, to San Antonio; I shot the WTO riots; it didn't improve. One thing did help, a little; getting that nice 85mm fixed-focal-length lens described above. I still missed my old camera, but... shooting with that managed to be okay. I kind of liked it. I liked not having to screw with the zoom. Not as much as I'd liked the old camera, though.
Thinking about it, I think it's because it wasn't just a light tube with film on the back. I think there's just too much crap involved. Far more controls - no, that's not right. Far more options. I had full control before, after all. It at setting locations scattered from the lens barrel to the body back, LCD display, onboard flash (that, thankfully, in the Elan version did not pop up automatically ever), modes for sports, modes for portraiture, modes for distance, modes for macro, all of which you could do yourself with less work, as far as I'm concerned - and honestly, all of that crap just got in the way. All this stuff intended to help got between me and the image, rather than getting me closer to it.
Plus, the damn thing was bigger, and despite this lighter, which, particularly with zoom lenses, made it harder to stablise. On the old camera, I successfully shot 1/30th of a second, f3.5, 270mm, no tripod. I've never come close to that with any other camera since. I was handed a Digital Rebel at Kenmore Camera a couple of days ago, just to play with. It's the cheapest digital body that takes these lenses, and it's just like the Elan in every way I didn't like.
So okay, you'd think, fine; I just need something that's a light tube with a sensor - a really good quality sensor - on one end. But that's not what I have with the PowerShot I've been borrowing from Paul for the last two years, and I shoot with that constantly. It does have some serious advantages; it's small and light, which means I can carry it everywhere and not lug a bag around. (That's a big deal for me.) But the disadvantages are huge. It has all sorts of crap going on, with all sorts of modes I ignore ("sports," "portrait," other BS the Elan had like that) but which still manage to get between me and image often enough to annoy me, usually when the setting knob gets knocked and changes modes. Its brain is still kind of dumb. Its viewfinder is useless; I use the LCD exclusively. It's only 4mp and the optics really aren't very good. And the sensor gets really unnecessarily weird when it comes to certain reds.
But despite all this, I shoot with it constantly, and most importantly, I enjoy it. You see some of the results on this journal. Almost every image I've posted for the last couple of years has been that PowerShot A80. Which leads to the obvious why? Except for being tiny and not having other lenses around, it's the exact opposite of the SLR I loved, and is a lot like the SLR I never liked.
I think it's two things. 1) It's small. I like that a lot. It's zero production work to have it with me; I throw it in my backpack and I'm off. That's one huge thing less between me and image; no camera bag. 2) The LCD lets me ignore all the crap that is between me and image because I can see the image through the camera in the way I could with the full-manual SLR (live, reasonably accurate for a low-resolution microsummary), and couldn't with the EOS 100/Elan (also live, but never really right, somehow). I don't even try to use the viewfinder, like I did on the Digital Rebel, which I could just feel misleading me, and on which I'm not going to shoot through the LCD. It's so very clearly not built for that, I'd feel like a fool.
So, I use the A80, and I use it a lot. But on the other hand, I have genuinely outgrown it. (Arguably, I did that years ago. But I digress.) The last year in particular I've been shooting shots it shouldn't be taking. Sometimes, I get away with it. Sometimes, I really don't. Obviously, I need to step up another level - but I really don't like the idea of having a digital version of my Elan. And I kinda liked the high-end Powershot line they showed me at Kenmore Camera - two models, both 10.1mp, one with a swing-out LCD that takes AA batteries (rechargeable or alkaline) so is bigger, one smaller without swing-out LCD and a weird battery. They have clearly better optics, which I certainly want, tho' certainly also are not up to the level of the lenses I'm selling. They have better sensors, tho' probably not up to the level of a digital SLR. But there's More Crap on them. Not as much More Crap as on the Rebel, but still, More Crap. And, after my last experience, More Crap makes me nervous.
So. There we are. I'm not really sure what to do and it's not like there is a lot I can do right now anyway. If I sell these lenses and the Elan body I could get a high-end Powershot out of the proceeds. I'd have the upgrade I'd like of the camera I actually use, but I wouldn't have the - theoretical - capacity to take professional publication-quality photographs anymore, and I dislike that idea on a purely theoretical basis.
But I suppose if I needed to do that for some reason, I could go dig up another used 35mm screw-mount full-manual metal-body SLR. I hear nice lenses for those things are awfully, awfully cheap...
Then you get to the 85mm f1.8 - yay, speedy - and I started remembering that the only time I ever even halfway liked shooting with the Elan was using this lens. And you see on eBay that it sells for $300, used - which is only $40 off new via mail-order in New York. Ultra-quiet, ultra-fast, and ultra-discreet, Best portrait lens in the world, a fantastic portrait lens, with jaw dropping sharpness at all apertures. The bokeh is also outstanding - creamy, buttery, milky, smooth. Excellent contrast, vivid colours, OUTSTANDING in the lab... at ALL aperture settings... and I'm thinking... I like photography. What the hell is wrong with me? Why am I selling these lenses?!
And then I remember that I haven't shot through them in, what, three years? Yeah. Three years.
Maybe four. But I think three.
So I spent some time thinking about this. Before I had the Elan - bought shortly before digitals got worthwhile, bad timing! - I had a full-metal-body full-manual SLR, like every good art-school student should. I had a really good 50mm (which, amusingly, sold for much more than I paid for it on eBay), a pretty good 135mm (and a doubler), a macro, a wide-angle, and a junky 55mm I only kept because you never know what could happen.
I loved shooting with that thing. I was super-fast with it - 2 frames per second manual-winding? CAN do sport. I hit 3fps at least once, when I didn't have to refocus. The body had a thing where you could compose with the aperture left wide open, click the aperture down to actual for preview, then shoot. Basically, it was a light tube, with film behind it. And because it was full-manual, it was built to be full-manual, and there were pleasantly few controls. Aperture and focus on the lens; shutter speed on the body; click to preview depth of field, click to shoot. That was it.
Then it died of a combination of old-age and battery-reference error (not mine; the reference replacement battery for one no longer made killed the light metre) and I thought it was time to upgrade. I surveyed the market extensively. I hated the Nikon control set a lot; I didn't like the Minolta series's limited lens set, tho' the lenses around were awfully nice; I wasn't interested in large-format (or large-format price tags), and the Canon had nice lenses available and the least annoying UI. Plus, the 100 (in Japan) a.k.a. the Elan (in the US) would let me override everything if I thought I needed to, so - the Elan it was. I refused the bundled 75-300mm zoom lens as a piece of junk, and negotiated for the faster (and clearly better even at the time) 70-210mm above instead. This, somewhat to my surprise, worked. (Again: quantity vs. quality. They still make a cheapy 75-300mm. They still make a nice 70-200, but in the L - professional - line only. But they don't make this lens anymore.)
And then I never liked shooting with it.
I didn't hate it. I thought it was just a matter of getting used to all the controls, and the approach, which was so different than the SLR I'd replaced. But it didn't really get any better with time. I shot trips to Baltimore, to San Antonio; I shot the WTO riots; it didn't improve. One thing did help, a little; getting that nice 85mm fixed-focal-length lens described above. I still missed my old camera, but... shooting with that managed to be okay. I kind of liked it. I liked not having to screw with the zoom. Not as much as I'd liked the old camera, though.
Thinking about it, I think it's because it wasn't just a light tube with film on the back. I think there's just too much crap involved. Far more controls - no, that's not right. Far more options. I had full control before, after all. It at setting locations scattered from the lens barrel to the body back, LCD display, onboard flash (that, thankfully, in the Elan version did not pop up automatically ever), modes for sports, modes for portraiture, modes for distance, modes for macro, all of which you could do yourself with less work, as far as I'm concerned - and honestly, all of that crap just got in the way. All this stuff intended to help got between me and the image, rather than getting me closer to it.
Plus, the damn thing was bigger, and despite this lighter, which, particularly with zoom lenses, made it harder to stablise. On the old camera, I successfully shot 1/30th of a second, f3.5, 270mm, no tripod. I've never come close to that with any other camera since. I was handed a Digital Rebel at Kenmore Camera a couple of days ago, just to play with. It's the cheapest digital body that takes these lenses, and it's just like the Elan in every way I didn't like.
So okay, you'd think, fine; I just need something that's a light tube with a sensor - a really good quality sensor - on one end. But that's not what I have with the PowerShot I've been borrowing from Paul for the last two years, and I shoot with that constantly. It does have some serious advantages; it's small and light, which means I can carry it everywhere and not lug a bag around. (That's a big deal for me.) But the disadvantages are huge. It has all sorts of crap going on, with all sorts of modes I ignore ("sports," "portrait," other BS the Elan had like that) but which still manage to get between me and image often enough to annoy me, usually when the setting knob gets knocked and changes modes. Its brain is still kind of dumb. Its viewfinder is useless; I use the LCD exclusively. It's only 4mp and the optics really aren't very good. And the sensor gets really unnecessarily weird when it comes to certain reds.
But despite all this, I shoot with it constantly, and most importantly, I enjoy it. You see some of the results on this journal. Almost every image I've posted for the last couple of years has been that PowerShot A80. Which leads to the obvious why? Except for being tiny and not having other lenses around, it's the exact opposite of the SLR I loved, and is a lot like the SLR I never liked.
I think it's two things. 1) It's small. I like that a lot. It's zero production work to have it with me; I throw it in my backpack and I'm off. That's one huge thing less between me and image; no camera bag. 2) The LCD lets me ignore all the crap that is between me and image because I can see the image through the camera in the way I could with the full-manual SLR (live, reasonably accurate for a low-resolution microsummary), and couldn't with the EOS 100/Elan (also live, but never really right, somehow). I don't even try to use the viewfinder, like I did on the Digital Rebel, which I could just feel misleading me, and on which I'm not going to shoot through the LCD. It's so very clearly not built for that, I'd feel like a fool.
So, I use the A80, and I use it a lot. But on the other hand, I have genuinely outgrown it. (Arguably, I did that years ago. But I digress.) The last year in particular I've been shooting shots it shouldn't be taking. Sometimes, I get away with it. Sometimes, I really don't. Obviously, I need to step up another level - but I really don't like the idea of having a digital version of my Elan. And I kinda liked the high-end Powershot line they showed me at Kenmore Camera - two models, both 10.1mp, one with a swing-out LCD that takes AA batteries (rechargeable or alkaline) so is bigger, one smaller without swing-out LCD and a weird battery. They have clearly better optics, which I certainly want, tho' certainly also are not up to the level of the lenses I'm selling. They have better sensors, tho' probably not up to the level of a digital SLR. But there's More Crap on them. Not as much More Crap as on the Rebel, but still, More Crap. And, after my last experience, More Crap makes me nervous.
So. There we are. I'm not really sure what to do and it's not like there is a lot I can do right now anyway. If I sell these lenses and the Elan body I could get a high-end Powershot out of the proceeds. I'd have the upgrade I'd like of the camera I actually use, but I wouldn't have the - theoretical - capacity to take professional publication-quality photographs anymore, and I dislike that idea on a purely theoretical basis.
But I suppose if I needed to do that for some reason, I could go dig up another used 35mm screw-mount full-manual metal-body SLR. I hear nice lenses for those things are awfully, awfully cheap...
