A Sinkhole of Money

Arklatexian said:

I had a cousin who would watch me using my old used Leica M3 and M2. He once told me that he wished he could afford a Leica. I answered him that if he would completely give up smoking cigarettes for one year, at the end of that year he could buy, not used equipment like mine but a new Leica and lens and pay cash. Cigarettes won out and he has been dead from emphysema and cardiac problems for years now. Me?, I am still using my old (now older) M3 and M2 cameras. Sure glad some rich person bought them new so I could have the opportunity to wear them out. It seems as if they are outlasting me........Regards!

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Yep - I hear you.
My friend's wife was a smoker for over 40 years.
If you do the math it is a huge amount of money.
Tom

Instead of apsolute amount - we could also calculate in comparison with average sallary for your job in your country. West Europe, USA, Japan and similar - I bet the percentage is very small for APUGers from those areas.

blockend said:

People with disposable income like to find ways of making their hobby expensive. HiFi people want things other people can't hear, car people want them to be impractically shiny or fast. Camera people own perfectly good lenses but want one four times the price that's 10% better. It's a way of justifying an urge that only makes sense in the asylum they inhabit.

The assumption that such things are for listening to music, or a means of transport or of making pictures are met with same pitying incredulity reserved for the mentally impaired. It goes up to 11, manufacturer's make them and other people own them so, duh...

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Amen Brother.!
Even though Blind Tests keep proving that people CANNOT hear or see what they say they can, the insanity continues. All a company needs to do is to generate some kind of Report/Data (no matter how failed it is) and customers will swear to it.
LOTS of examples in the Hi-Fi world, but perhaps none as idiotic as those $150.00 power cords.Forget about the 100 miles of transmission lines, the step-down transformer going to your house, the 400 yards of 14AWG wire in your walls, or the 20AWG wire in the stereo.......That will all be negated if you purchase our "Special" 2.79 feet of 16AWG stranded wire power cord.

blockend said:

People with disposable income like to find ways of making their hobby expensive. HiFi people want things other people can't hear, car people want them to be impractically shiny or fast. Camera people own perfectly good lenses but want one four times the price that's 10% better. It's a way of justifying an urge that only makes sense in the asylum they inhabit.

The assumption that such things are for listening to music, or a means of transport or of making pictures are met with same pitying incredulity reserved for the mentally impaired. It goes up to 11, manufacturer's make them and other people own them so, duh...

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As a young person without much disposable income, gotta look after the bang for the buck. Film photography is not cheap but neither are many things.
Can buy a perfectly decent 90s AF SLR for 20€ and then scrape here and there for the film and development. Adding everything up I may have 1-2K of equipment accumulated from here and there. At the end the most important is to get out there and shoot. A friend of mine says that photographs have a large potential, not only monetary. People die and things go away... So as a complement of a memory it is good.

HiFi wise, just go for decentish headphones and the house stereo was kit built by my uncle. Anyways it's not something to be cared about nowadays much, and once some decent gear is put in the most important improvement lies in the source. So much for Hypercompressed remastering.

Prest_400 said:

At the end the most important is to get out there and shoot.

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Absolutely. As a flat broke teenager I convinced my parents to buy me a Chinon SLR, anything fancier was out of the question. Of course I craved something better but got on with the photography. Three years later I managed to buy myself an Olympus OM1. Looking back there was nothing wrong with the Chinon negatives or slides, they were as sharp and contrasty as other 35mm cameras and left an unrepeatable legacy of shots of an important era.

Being young and broke often leads to status anxiety. The truth is it doesn't matter what you shoot with so long as the photograph is interesting. Cameras can be replaced but your youthful years will never come back.

blockend said:

Absolutely. As a flat broke teenager I convinced my parents to buy me a Chinon SLR, anything fancier was out of the question. Of course I craved something better but got on with the photography. Three years later I managed to buy myself an Olympus OM1. Looking back there was nothing wrong with the Chinon negatives or slides, they were as sharp and contrasty as other 35mm cameras and left an unrepeatable legacy of shots of an important era.

Being young and broke often leads to status anxiety. The truth is it doesn't matter what you shoot with so long as the photograph is interesting. Cameras can be replaced but your youthful years will never come back.

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Well Said.....

blockend said:

Absolutely. As a flat broke teenager I convinced my parents to buy me a Chinon SLR, anything fancier was out of the question. Of course I craved something better but got on with the photography. Three years later I managed to buy myself an Olympus OM1. Looking back there was nothing wrong with the Chinon negatives or slides, they were as sharp and contrasty as other 35mm cameras and left an unrepeatable legacy of shots of an important era.

Being young and broke often leads to status anxiety. The truth is it doesn't matter what you shoot with so long as the photograph is interesting. Cameras can be replaced but your youthful years will never come back.

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BTDT and I began seriously with an OM1. Early on, of course the 1.4's, Pro Film and Medium Format all were quite alluring. Eventually I got into some other stuff and went to Medium Format, under the impression of superiority though no more 35mm. Film costs/price per frame and cheap 135 cameras meant this didn't hold for long.
I use prosumer or consumer cameras for 35mm as "battle cameras" and killed a couple due to salt water exposure and beach duties but got great results out of that usage. The best example is a Canon Waterproof that I got for 1GBP and could just get a couple rolls through, but allowed me a special perspective.
The best images from a couple years ago were on "late friend's dad shed stored 1 year expired cheap Fujicolor". I myself am a maximizer and try to get the maximum (quality), but when otherwise just make it work under the limits.
Thankfully digital is a good compliment as well.
But there are 90s AF SLRs for very affordable prices that have features Leica don't (I know, these are unsexy VCR alike things) but as a light tight box, at less the price a fuel tank, are excellent.

Then the irony: "On imperfection lies expression". End up having top gear that is bordering perfection, and then seek "inferior" stuff to get some character.