When It Rains.....It Pours!

I know that people tend to use this little phrase in a negative sense, but this is a case where the opposite is true. A few posts ago (In "Milk Run") I wrote about picking up an underpriced 2010 MacBook with the funds that I had accumulated from doing some misc. computer work. Of course I'm not in the process of a switch to Mac, but I'm more than happy to take advantage of the Mac-Lovers out there, by making money off of them! In this case, I ended up selling the cleaned-up (in a physical as well as computer sense of the word) for $500! Yup, I doubled my money (more or less) in 2 weeks. 

  At this point, things started coming together. First I came across a D50 that the seller seemed to think that there was something wrong with: he stated that it would occasionally "not focus" giving an R07 error. After a little bit of research, I found that this wasn't an error, but the camera telling the user that it's in the process writing the images from the buffer to the memory card and there are 7 images left to write! While this is happening, the camera won't do anything else, including trying to focus. I got it for $91 (shipping included), so the "back-up/hazardous duty" camera has been acquired. Pretty closely thereafter came the Tablet.....

 Several months ago, I got involved in examining the market for tablets at the prompting of a friend, of course, I had come across the ThinkPad offering at that time, but dismissed it because it was in the "nose-bleed" $650+ area that's clearly aimed at the business end of the market. However, it was essentially a ThinkPad version of what a tablet should be, with excellent IPS/Gorilla Glass hi-res screens (1280 x 800) and built-in Pen input capability. What one reviewer said sums it up suscintly: "What your IT department would design a tablet to be". A few days ago, there appeared on eBay the high-end (64Gb) version "As Is" for $200 with a "make offer" option. After a little back and forth with the seller, it was found that the tablet won't power on, but.......still under warrantee TILL NOVEMBER! Holy Cats! I offered him $150, which he took, so I'm chomping at the bit waiting for this thing to show up so I can send it in to Lenovo for repairs. 

Which leads in to a rarely discussed grey area. That of buying products known to be "not working", but still under warrantee. This can be a tremendous technique for saving and/or getting an otherwise overly expensive product. But it's not without problems. First of all, there is every possibility that you'll find that the item has been broken due to some user error that voids the warranty. Secondly, it often requires a LOT of research to ascertain whether it's even eligible for repairs under warranty anyway. In this case, I was able to find this out because I'm very familiar with ThinkPad support (which the seller was not). Then comes the really tricky part. In the process of messaging back and forth, you have to figure out whether the seller is being honest about his selling the product. Whether this was really something he just broke or in this case, part of a "mixed lot" of corporate "cast-offs" that he picked up. A quick look at his "other items" for sale indicated that it was the later reason. So, I decided that I'm willing to bear the risk of getting it repair under warranty (or not) for $150 which is what I offered and he accepted. Typically, these are not IT guys and want to just sell off as quickly as possible so they can do it all over again. 

 The last thing was the "Plastic Fantastic", or 28-80mm f3.3-5.6 "G" lens which I had previously written about as the perfect pairing with the light and compact D50. Virtually all the professional reviews I've seen of it rave about it's performance being all out of proportion with it's weight, size and cost. I had found that it can often be found under $50, but last night, I scored one for under $30, after shipping! This was probably because of the auction ending at the awkward time of just after midnight central time, regarless......I'm happy!

The upshot is that, all-in-all, for about $280, I was able to score three of the items on my "wanted" lists by spending just a little bit more than the profit I made from "flipping" the MacBook. Yup, this there is going to require more writing after I use them for a while, but I'm sure looking forward to that!

Great Deal (Part 2): Lenses

One of the main draws of using single lens reflex cameras is that the vast majority of them were designed to have interchangeable lenses. Over their existence, the array of these lenses has been astounding, not just in terms of varied focal lengths, but types as well. However, they all still required a person to focus the image which could be difficult at times. By the late 70's, manufactures were seriously developing a number of systems that would autofocus the lens. These ranged from the Konica C35 "point and shoot" to the Polaroid SX-70 that used a variation of sonar! In 1981 Pentax was the first "out the gate" with a system for 35mm SLRs which used a built-in IR rangefinder fitted to an adapted ME, and called it the ME-F. Nikon followed in 1983 with the F3AF, but this, like the Pentax was a lens based system, slow, bulky and just not very workable.
In 1985 though, Minolta came out with an "integrated" system where the electronics and mechanism were largely in the body of the camera. This was the Maxxum 7000 (Dynax in some markets), and it completely changed the SLR industry. Nikon followed quickly with its own body integrated system and in 1992 Canon brought out a lens motorized system on a new mount called the EOS.
At that point, the changeover to autofocus for SLRs was pretty much complete. So for most manufacturers, there have been autofocus lenses in the market for the better part of 25 years. That adds up to a lot of glass floating around out there in the used market. For the first 15 of those 25 years, it was autofocus lenses made for 35mm film cameras. The bulk of digital camera makers made their sensor sizes right around APS-C with gives the equivalent focal length about a 50% boost. Of course, this is a double edge sword in that it's great on the long end of things, but is a wide angle killer on the other end! All those 80-200mm zooms are suddenly now 120-300mm, but then those 28mm lenses are basically 42mm "normal" lens!
Then how do you take advantage of all that old glass out there? Well, you start with the new! The best deal in the market is the kit zoom that most camera are packaged! Every single camera maker has an inexpensive, yet eminently competent lens that they often include as a starter for their basic offerings. Overwhelmingly, they tend to be 18-55mm, but on occasion you'll come across one that's 18-70mm. That's equivalent to about a 28-82mm or 28-105mm, and it's a good starting point. True, these things typically aren't optically stellar, and their build quality is; shall we say....utilitarian? However, they are commonly thrown in to the deal, and even if you have to buy one, you can't beat the price since they usually sell for less than $100.
OK, let's just say that you're able to score a really good deal and are able to land one of these kit zooms along with your $200-300, 6 Mp camera. Where do you go from here? To me, a great first purchase would be either a 55-200mm or a 70-300mm, so let's examine them.
The 55-200mm (or there-abouts) is a common focal length that manufacturers like to sell as a matching "first upgrade" lens. Virtually all major manufacturers have them and they are even sold at Wal-mart if that tells you anything. On the used market, they can often be found not much above $100 since they typically sold for less than $200-250 new. The APS-C conversion puts them at a 35mm eq. of 300mm on the long end which makes for a pretty nice soccer lens. They are generally also very compact and designed to have the same filter ring size as the kit zoom. So between the two lenses and a camera, you can go from an eq. of 28mm out to 300mm for less than $400.
However, when you delve into the older "non-digital" glass, that's when sharp-eyed buyers can get really nice deals. We'll start with the 70-300mm zoom, which were very common back 20-25 years ago. They were not only made by the OEMs, but by virtually every third-party lens company as well. On top of that, they were commonly rebranded by importers such as Promaster, Vivitar as well the Ritz camera store chain as their house brand, Quantaray. The Tamron 70-300/f4.5-5.6 was so common that it could be considered a generic of the type. I've seen them sell for less than $50, but more typically between $60 and $80. This is a lens that will give an equivilent zoom range that begins at 105mm and goes out to a whopping 450mm!
While those sound great and in fact are excellent deals, there's another often overlooked lens that can put a budding photographer in another class. And that's the old "normal" lens. REALLY!!! 25 years ago, camera manufacturers were still in the old 35mm mindset and along with that was the old "normal" lens standby that was virtually thrown in to every deal. So there's a lot of 50mm/f1.8s floating around out there and if you are OK to do you own focusing you can get them even cheaper than the $100 it'll costs to buy one of the autofocus versions.
Beyond, this there's a whole world of manual focus lenses that nobody wants (as long as you stay away from collector's lenses). They also have the tendency to perform better than anyone has the right to expect given the price since the smaller sensor'd cameras only use the middle of the glass and thus eliminating the age-old bugaboo of budget glass....edge performance. We're talking about lenses going back to the '60s! Sure, you'll have to manually focus, check to make sure that it'll mount on your camera w/o damage, and maybe even calculate exposure manually, but then what's that compared to what you can find out there for a few dollars. The literally thousands of 400/500mm Japanese "pre-set" lens that are available for less than $50. Throw a cheap 2x convertor on these and you have a converted focal length upwards of 1500mm! Take you kid outside and shoot some cool moon-phase pictures. Cut down an old broken gunstock, build a mount and go shoot pictures of wild animals. There are also lots of faster (f2.8) 20/24mm wide-angles that although convert to 30/36mm, are much faster than the kit zooms. They can make great party or indoor "event" photography lenses. For the use of old lenses like these, Nikon and Pentax are probably the most well known, but lots of people use the Sony/Konica-Minolta and even Canon with an adapter since they abandoned their old mount when shifting to auto-focus.
So, lets say that you this sounds interesting and bite on this idea. What do the dollar figures look like? Let's make some middle of the road assumptions and say that you paid $250 for the older DSLR camera with a "kit" lens thrown in, then pick up a 70-300mm zoom for about $75, then a 50mm "normal" for another $100. This all adds up to a pretty complete system for $425 that covers a 35mm converted focal length of 28mm out to 450mm, AND a low light f1.8 lens that the camera sees as 75mm that's perfect for available light portraiture. That's pretty amazing! Especially since that total won't even buy a the lowest-end camera with the kit lens, new from Wal-mart or Target. I've seen compact-sensor, point and shoot cameras that cost this much.

The Plastic-Fantastic!

In my last post, I touched on a "back-up" camera to the D300 (Holy Grail) that I bought last year, and have continued to give the idea more serious thought as well as quite a bit more research. I had also come to the conclusion that the best fit for me out of the cast of characters (Nikon D70, D70s, D50, D40), and the D50 had kind of "won out".
In this post, let me elaborate on this choice as well as another thought......a lens......go figure, right!?! Basically without slipping into "review" territory, let me just start with the important attributes about this particular Nikon model that has somehow separated it from the pack. First of all, it's significantly smaller than the D70/D70s bodies. The last post has an image of it right behind a D70 and it's quite marked. Below is a picture from the top which shows how much narrower it is.
I'm not saying that it's "pocketable", but when combined with the right lens (more on that later), this could present quite a bit less mass. So my search for something that's not as intimidating as my full on D300 rig with MB-D10 battery grip and 18-200mm super-zoom, for "street" photography could come to fruition. So, let's see; smaller, lighter, uses the same battery, can focus the same lenses. With the exception of it using the incompatible SD memory cards, this camera could be "IT"! After reading lots of reviews, I became even more convinced that this should probably be my target. One professional photographer/reviewer became so enamored of it, that he dubbed it the "Plastic-Fantastic"! The consensus of all the reviews was that although this camera was made of plastic, it didn't feel "plasticy", unlike the rival small Canons.

So, what has led me in this direction and away from the Olympus E-330 that I had discussed in previous posts? Here's the thing: most ALL advanced photographic systems are all about the glass. Ultimately, the vast majority of photographers who shoot SLRs (of any kind) will have more invested in their lenses then their camera bodies. And with the advent of the modern electronic-centric digital-SLR, this trend is even more pronounced. Quite often you'll even see high-end cameras displaced in the product line in as little as two years! It's simply not possible to constantly replace all of a collection of lenses. So, from a pragmatic standpoint, even if I bought an E-330 at a great price, then assembling enough lenses to make use of it would impede the acquisition of comparable Nikon glass that'd be useable in my main system as well. That just doesn't make good economic sense and I do teach that subject! Now, that doesn't mean I don't love the design of both the Olympus E-330 and Panasonic DMC GF-1 that I talked about in previous posts and won't at some future date try to pick one or both up when their prices have dropped more......but just not now. Yes, I know; it's a sad thing that we can't have everything that we want, but such is life!

So....how exactly does one turn a (relatively) compact DSLR like the D50 into some facsimile of a "street-shooter".....small, light, with some focal length flexibility? ....with the "plastic-fantastic" lens of course! As you can see from the picture above; that's not much of a lens. From it's plastic mount to it's plastic filter ring, it only measures 2.5". It weighs in at just a hair under 7oz. There's no aperture ring, so if you don't have a camera that's capable of electronically controlling the f-stops, then you're out of luck! It's actually a simplified version of the already cheap, 28-80mm/f3.5-5.6 kit lens that Nikon created to match their early low-end AF cameras (6 elements in 6 groups) which included a (then new) Hybrid aspherical element by bonding a polycarbonate (plastic) element with one of the glass ones. At the time, it was considered to be an adequate optical performer, but a pariah to traditional Nikonians for all the cost-cutting measures. However, this didn't deter the legions of consumers who now bought Nikon's inexpensive auto-focus cameras on which this lens was included as part of the "kit". The estimates of units produced vary, but it's most probably in the high- hundreds of thousands or millions, so finding one cheap is not much of a challenge!
The "undropped-shoes" on this is that, with modern, DX sized sensor digital camera, this lens is an amazing performer all out of proportion with it's size and cost (typically under $50)! When combined with the equally nice performing for the price (~ $150) D50, it makes a great inexpensive/compact combo, that would perform not only as a "street-shooter", take anywhere camera, but as a backup to my system as well. I know that the D40 is significantly smaller than the D50, but it doesn't have a screw-drive motor and uses a different battery as well.
As you can see from the above image, it's pretty darned compact and lightweight (26oz total) rig. My D300 with battery, but without lens weighs 32oz, by itself! That lens give a converted angle of view on a 35mm camera of roughly 42-120mm, giving it a nice "normal" to "portrait"-short telephoto range. All for a less than $200 with a little bit of judicious shopping!

Some of you might be wondering how this fits in with my "build quality" philosophy that I often point to? Of course, I still think and will probably always think that it's important, but it's also a relative concept of course. First of all; it's relative to what you can afford! Secondly, and I think, most importantly, the concept should be applied relative to the expected function of the product. More specifically; any "front-line" product that you'd expect to use regularly or in a high-leverage environment must be "top-notch". However, any device or product that's rarely used (like a back-up camera) must simply be functional. A good example is a home mechanic that only occasionally uses his tools: why would he run out and buy tens of thousands of dollars worth of professional grade Snap-On tools? In the case of this camera; it just needs to work at a decent level, be small enough to give me some functionality that the D300 does not.

Plastic-Fantastic indeed!