To Buy or Leave Alone

ColColt · Oct 16, 2015

I'm chomping at the bits over a lens I just saw. It's the Pentax 6x7 75 f2.8AL lens. Why I think I need it is another matter. I have the 75 f4.5 SMC lens but it's bigger, heavier and slower and therefore, can be a tad hard to focus when light level is low. From a sharpness perspective I don't know if one has an edge over the other. Any comments or suggestions about this?

Sirius Glass · Oct 16, 2015

You want it so buy it. Just give into the GAS. This is APUG and we are here to enable you weakness to GAS.

ColColt · Oct 16, 2015

I'm already weak. Maybe I should just fight the feeling rather than succumb to inner desires that get so out of hand.

480sparky · Oct 16, 2015

Just buy it. You don't need to pay the rent, or car payment, or buy food.

Gear is supreme.

Sirius Glass · Oct 16, 2015

ColColt said:
I'm already weak. Maybe I should just fight the feeling rather than succumb to inner desires that get so out of hand.

Just succumb to the inner desires and be done with it.

snikulin · Oct 16, 2015

To balance the Universe: no, don't buy it!

ColColt · Oct 16, 2015

Lets see...no house payment, no car payment, no wife to chasten me...things are looking up.

Ken Nadvornick · Oct 16, 2015

Take a slow walk alone through a cemetery, look closely at the names and dates, look very closely at the ages, listen to the solitude, notice the lichens, notice the moss, notice the trees growing on top of and down through the graves...

Then return home, buy the lens, and go use it.

Ken

Dan Quan · Oct 16, 2015

You know what you should do.

Fixcinater · Oct 16, 2015

Buy the 2.8 and sell the 4.5.

GAS is a journey: the less you fight it, the farther you can go.

winger · Oct 16, 2015

You must know by now that APUG is not the place to find anyone to tell you Not to buy any lens/camera/enlarger/film/paper, etc... Unless one of the rest of us wants it.

Theo Sulphate · Oct 17, 2015

Ken Nadvornick said:
Take a slow walk alone through a cemetery, look closely at the names and dates, look very closely at the ages, listen to the solitude, notice the lichens, notice the moss, notice the trees growing on top of and down through the graves...

...and smile in the knowledge that none of those poor souls had a 75/2.8 lens.

Poisson Du Jour · Oct 17, 2015

The SMC-P 75AL is not a lens to be belittled. Apart from the supremely easy and snappy focus (even with a polariser in place!) It is light, fast to focus, modern and extremely sharp. I know all of this as a long-time user printing to 20x27" (maxed out the printer at the lab! I'm going to be printing bigger from this lens on the P67). No aberrations in any sort of imaging you can poke at it. Team up with a high-end B+W protector for the front element. The 75AL is my standard lens and the one that the sticky-beaks gravitate toward. Expect to pay around $1,000, more for a mint-NIB specimen. The upper limit at the moment is around $1500.

Xmas · Oct 17, 2015

BASS - buy and sell syndrome

Stay away from cemeteries be happy.

Sirius Glass · Oct 17, 2015

Xmas said:
BASS - buy and sell syndrome

A new acronym for my LOAAA
[List Of Acronyms And Abbreviations].

ColColt · Oct 17, 2015

The only thing I've read of a negative connotation about his lens is distortion, although that wasn't clear.

Richard S. (rich815) · Oct 17, 2015

I doubt the sharpness difference, if any, is anything you'd be able to ascertain except under exacting conditions and circumstances. If you need a faster lens, especially for focusing accuracy, then get it. Even if the 4.5 is supposedly sharper that don't matter if you can't focus it well.

Kyle M. · Oct 17, 2015

Ken Nadvornick said:
Take a slow walk alone through a cemetery, look closely at the names and dates, look very closely at the ages, listen to the solitude, notice the lichens, notice the moss, notice the trees growing on top of and down through the graves...

Then return home, buy the lens, and go use it.

Ken

I though I was the only person who did this.

Mustafa Umut Sarac · Oct 17, 2015

buy a leica.

benjiboy · Oct 17, 2015

Buy it, my friend your'e a hell of a long time dead.

ColColt · Oct 17, 2015

buy a leica

I have one...the M2 and three lens.

Yep, you only go around once, I fear. I heard someone say live life to the hilt...makes sense to me.

Poisson Du Jour · Oct 17, 2015

ColColt said:
The only thing I've read of a negative connotation about his lens is distortion, although that wasn't clear.

Prove that to me.

I really don't think you should buy this lens unless you can make it pay for itself. This requires a long term professional commitment. Mine has paid for itself probably 3 or 4 times now, but amateurs buying these things for "show and tell" is silly.

ColColt · Oct 17, 2015

I'm hardly an amateur and not buying it for show and tell. I made a living with the Pentax 6x7 for some years but gave up doing weddings as it was just physically and mentally too demanding at 50+ years old at the time. Now, if a person has more money than he knows what to do with, like myself, another lens is no big thing. I don't need a professional commitment to buy something I think I'll use or even want. How many of us would have what we have if we looked at it from that perspective?

Ken Nadvornick · Oct 17, 2015

ColColt said:
I don't need a professional commitment to buy something I think I'll use or even want. How many of us would have what we have if we looked at it from that perspective?

Yep. Return-on-investment is a terrible precondition to attach to an avocation. Hobbies by design are supposed to generate negative cash flow. The reward comes in intangibles.

Nobody looks up from the satin pillow at that line of sad faces passing by for the final time and thinks, damn, I wish now I would have skipped buying that lens because it just never generated sufficient ROI...

Ken

ColColt · Oct 17, 2015

I guess I should have tried to retrieve all those tens of thousands of bullets I sent down range to resell or use again since shooting was just a hobby with zero cash flow...good grief.

To Buy or Leave Alone

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