Lens Box

A digression. I went through a camera phase once. If you are already deep in the camera swamp, this will bore you. Skip ahead.

A while back I bought an EOS 90D. The last APS-C DSLR. I figured I might upgrade to full-frame eventually, so I started hunting full-frame lenses on eBay. Turns out the procurement channels I used for server parts worked just as well. The lenses cost more than the body.

Camera lenses come in three classes: wide-angle, standard, telephoto. Collecting all three is likened to a winning hand in mahjong. I started with the budget version. Before long I had moved to the premium set. The difference is lens speed. Faster glass shoots in darker rooms. Backgrounds blur beautifully. That is all. The price more than doubles for it. Once you see the difference you cannot go back. The entrance to the swamp is always the same sentence: "just one better lens."

A friend who had already fallen in told me his philosophy. Think of the used-camera shop as your storage unit. Any lens you sell, you can buy back. It is not gone. It is just not in your hands. The logic is completely broken. It was strangely persuasive.

I remember visiting my parents and looking at my father's lens box with cold eyes. Big lenses lined up in a humidity-controlled cabinet. Nothing about them interested me technologically. Mechanical optics. Not a shred of digital. I could not fathom what made them interesting.

A few years later my own room held the same kind of lens box. I eventually realized I had nothing to photograph and quit. The lenses are office rental equipment now.

Blood runs true. I just never expected it to run all the way down to the lens count.