I Just Can't Help Myself

My name is Bill and I'm addicted to buying photography equipment. Well, it's not quite that dramatic but you get the picture. As far as I know every serious photographer has this affliction. There's always 1 more lens, 1 more bag, 1 more gizmo and I know if I just had that 1 more dealio I could make better images. They say you can never be too rich or too thin and you can never have too much photo gear.

I'm not sure exactly when this started but I think it was during my first 2 or 3 weeks at the Fishback School of Photography back in the 70's. I thought I had some pretty good equipment to start the school. I was armed with a Mamiya Sekor 1000DTL body complete with a 50mm 1.8 "normal" lens, a Bushnell 28mm and a Tamron 80-200 zoom. A couple of weeks in I realized that my photographs were mostly fuzzygraphs. I worked with my technique but that didn't help. My friend and instructor, Kurt Fishback, broke the bad news to me: "Bill, I hate to be the one to tell you, but your lenses are crap." And so started my addiciton.

The fall from grace was quick and terrible starting with a move up to a medium format Mamiya C220. Eventually I replaced my 35mm equipment with Canon gear and started a seemingly never ending parade of lenses. Sigma 400 f5.6, Tokina 80-200 f2.8, Canon 35-105, Canon 100-300. There was no end in sight. And the accessories...Heaven help me!

Shoulder bags, backpacks, more backpacks. Larger bags, smaller bags. Tripods, big ones and little ones. Filters, both the screw in and Cokin P mount varieties. Warming filters, cooling filters, polarizing filters, neutral density filters, red filters, orange filters, yellow filters, and the ever present skylight filters. Thank goodness I never liked the effects obtained with warming or cooling polarizers or color intensifying filters. That would have only added to my woes. Oh, and by the way, every lens takes a different size filter so I had to have a complete set of filters in 3 different sizes.

Over the years I developed several stratagies for combating that dreaded question from my wife. When I wanted a new piece of gear she would ask "What will this do that your current equipment won't do?" I learned early on that "make me happy" was not the hoped for response but if I could justify my request I usually got my way. I guess she was and still is my enabler. But I learned to trick her. For example, when I spotted a nifty 4X5 field camera I wanted I did what any normal photography addict would do: I borrowed a 4X5 from work and photographed a landscape in Rocky Mountain National park on 4X5 and the same scene on 35mm transparancy film. When making my case for buying the camera she asked the question. I responded by putting the 35mm slide on the light table..nice, eh? Then I dropped the 4X5 next to it and she said "Oh....I see." Next day I was the proud owner of a Calumet 4X5 wooden field camera and the gear circus began all over again. More lenses, more filters, film holders, polaroid backs, focusing loupes, tape measure to calculate bellows factor, and of course a bigger backpack to carry it all. Oh yeah, a bigger tripod to hold it steady.

That was a long time ago though, and I think I'm finally under control. Well mostly. I don't really consider the deal when I decided to sell the 4X5 and go completely digital. And I haven't bought a new lens in nearly 2 years. Of course you might remind me of the switch to a smaller lighter tripod and smaller ballhead. Then the switch from aluminum to carbon fiber tripod and a newer fancier ballhead. Then the search for another smaller tripod to travel with but it was okay, I still had an extra head for the new tripod. And when I bought the daypack for my trip to Utah last year I had every intention of selling it when I got back, really I did.

But I think I've finally reached a place where I can be comfortable. I've got a nice DSLR and 3 excellent lenses. Not only that but I've converted to all slide in filters and 2 of my 3 lenses are the same filter size so I only need 2 adapter rings. But then, I sold my macro lens a while back and there's a wildflower season fast approaching. And the 100-400 is a great lens but not a fantastic lens...wonder if I could trade it for a nice 70-200 L lens. But then I'd have to find a long fast lens for wildlife. And when push comes to shove my DSLR is two generations removed from the newest model scheduled to be out soon. And memory cards...you can never have too many memory cards.

Honey....can I borrow the checkbook?