Have you ever bought a lens for just one photo?

tezzasmall

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And I used it a 2nd time for the 2018 lunar eclipse. Focusing was a pain even with live view of the digital camera.

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Beautiful pictures there.

And much better than my b/w ones, that I took when I went to Romania on a total eclipse holiday, some time ago now.

So, an interesting holiday, great memories but average pictures. You can't have it all I suppose.

Terry S
 

eli griggs

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No, no myself, but as a freelancer, a photographer/friend I did work for, did so, IIRC, buying both a wide angle large format lens and a very nice circular polarizer for the cover shots of a industry catalog (and all the other photographs within).

The products, with models staged through-out, looked down a very nice neighborhood street, laid out on a hill, and featured models with tools, such as mowers, bowers, trimmers, etc. in the yards, near and far down to the eventual curve in the road that mover out of the shot.

The lawns were perfect, except for the one lawn that had bermuda grass, very brown as the shoot was just at the beginning of Spring; our Rep painted it with a pump sprayer and what was supposed to be grass green.

I believe another photographer I worked with did so, as well, for a series of wide interior architecture shots.

It's hard to buy a quality lens for just one use, as opposed to buying one for one shot/shoot, but knowing it fills a gap in your coverage that you plan to continue shooting in, ie, I want to buy a Hasselblad bellows and135mm lens, to recreate or more to the point, re approach, that I shot in the 1980's with the same set-up, but, that is only the beginning of my use for that combination of kit.

IMO.
 

AndyH

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Yes, a fish-eye lens

Me too, for an architectural presentation project many years ago. A Nikon fisheye, which I immediately resold for a little more than half what I paid for it. Lens rental was much less common forty years ago, and I was doing a project that absolutely demanded a fisheye view. I also bought a Nikon PC lens, which I kept. Fortunately, the project was lucrative enough that it paid for both.

Andy
 

Jesper

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I've often used a single job as an excuse to buy something but I cannot honestly say that it was bought for the specific job.
 

railwayman3

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Same here, but mine was a 500mm f/8 Jessops Mirror lens for the 1999 solar eclipse in France. The problem was focussing and framing with an almost-black solar filter (apparent in trial shots) and I ended up using an ordinary 300mm telephoto for the actual event. A smaller image of the sun, but nice and sharp so easily enlarged in scanning and printing.
 
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