Originally posted by Rustyoldbug Heck, the other day I walked into a little independent camera shop on 101 called "Encinitas Photo" carrying my SP figuring someone my mistake it for something valuable if I left it in the car and break my window. The lady behind the counter said "I have a box of lenses in the back for that - hold on" - I got the whole box of screw mount primes for $25 bucks and sold the duplicate of the 28mm I already have on craigslist for $30 - so I made $5 bucks taking that "box o' primes" home.
I'll have to hang around cities more, wander into shops like that.
In the last indie shops I entered, outside Ft Huachuca AZ and in Folsom CA, the former was trying to sell old gear to retired GIs at inflated prices, while the latter had moved to smaller quarters and closed out their clearance section. Where do I find the giveaway stores?
But now I'm pretty much loaded with lenses, although I wouldn't mind a few more PKs and some upgraded M42s. So my current obsession (besides IR, actinic light, fisheyes, etc) is MF folders. The Zeiss Ikonta-B (120, 6x6) that I inherited is sorta like a pocket Hassy. I'm not sure how to characterize the 6x9s - Kodak Monitor (620, US$7) and a weird old Voigtlander (120, US$33). The latter, which I just bought on eBay yesterday, looks like it was originally designed for sheet film, then the roll-film back was retrofitted. Are these big guys like pocket Linhofs?
Anyway, the prospect of having a folder I can pull out of my back pocket, with a frame 5.5x the size of a FF/135, is just... AWESOME. Sure, these are slower than digicams or even most film SLRs and RFs. Sure, working with film is messier than offloading a memory card. Yeah, I gotta think before I shoot, and measure light, and not pretend that I'm doing something else. (Back when I had a Canon Dial-35, THAT was pretty much like using a stealth PNS.) If using slow smooth film, I must carry a tripod and shutter cable, set up on a sidewalk or rock, be obvious for some time. But the discipline of such deliberative photography is fun, in a way quite unlike whipping out the K20D and dialing-in a composition on the DA 18-250, and chimping and reshooting and chimping again, ad infinitum. The extra work provides a different satisfaction. As was mentioned before, it's
taking photos vs
making photos. A slow camera forces me to construct my images.