Stoopid Human Trick

Will Rogers once said "Everything is funny...when it happens to someone else!"  I often profess that while I'm not really a stupid person I frequently portray one in real life.  To illustrate this, just about the time I start to think I'm pretty darn sharp, something happens to keep me humble.  Listen up...

I can safely say that almost every photographer I know is a gearhead, myself included.  As my friend Bret says, we "worship at the altar of Gear."  One of my friends who shall remain nameless takes it to the extreme though.  My wife often tries to get me to quit visiting or shooting with him because there's always some new toy he has to show me that I want to buy.  In the past we've loaned each other lenses and stuff and it seems like every time we're swapping lenses he says "take this...how bout this...why not take this...."  Sometimes I have to tell him to just QUIT!  I got enough of your gear to add 10 pounds to my backpack! 

A few days before my recent trip to Moab, Utah, I was at his house to retrieve my 70-200 f4 lens and he started running through the list.  Seems he was between trips and pretty much everything in his bag was available.  After running through his "catalogue" of lenses, one of the things that I found desirable was a plain jane 50mm lens, the same kind of lens you used to get in the old days when you bought a camera with a "normal" lens.  In this day and age of high quality zoom lenses I haven't owned, much less used a 50mm lens for probably 2 decades but I wanted to do some night sky photography in the desert and the 50mm would be ideal.  Light enough and fast enough for my purposes so I tossed it in my bag. 

Well, the night sky photography didn't come to pass.  It was really windy in the desert all the time I was there which stirred up enough dust to make the air seem hazy.  It was great for sunrise shooting and amazing for sunset shots.  Night sky....not so much.  Besides, even if there were no dust and haze in the air the steady wind would have made a 30 second exposure impossible even with a solid tripod.  I did manage capture a few images with the 50mm one afternoon though and it was kinda fun.  I had to actually act like a photographer and move closer or further from the subject to frame the image properly.  Also, the lens is light, easy to use, and scary sharp!  Check the image with this blog for proof of that.  Ultimately, I kind of like this little lens and here is where the stupid human trick comes in. 

Arriving at the decision to acquire a 50mm of my very own (I still want to do some night sky shooting) I started haunting Craigslist when I got home from Moab.  Sadly, there were no 50mm Canon AF lenses to be had.  Lots of zooms but no 50's.  On to Ebay...tons of 50mm Canon lenses.  I narrowed my search by selecting Canon, Autofocus, Digital, and Prime as lens categories.  Scrolling through the listings I came across a 50mm f1.8 that was ending soon and had a pretty low bid on it so I decided to place my own bid, making it low enough so if someone outbid me it wouldn't be a problem.  To my surprise, the next morning I had an e-mail telling me I won the thing.  I promptly went to Ebay and arranged payment via PayPal and waited for my new toy to arrive. 

It came today and like a kid on Christmas, I had to open it before even taking my jacket off when I walked in the door and that's when my heart sank.  The lens I received is an older Canon FD (manual focus) mount lens.  There isn't enough hot glue and duct tape on the planet to make this thing fit on my autofocus EOS mount cameras!  You can imagine my outrage...someone had listed this lens as AF and sold it to me under false pretenses!  I fired up the computer and brought up the lens listing and sure enough, there in the information section of the listing it said....FD mount!  Duh me....it was right there and I missed it.  I operated on the assumption that since I narrowed my search criteria it had to be an AF lens so I didn't double check the fine print.  I now have a 50mm Canon lens but there is no way it will work on my camera.  It might as well be a paperweight.  Unbelievable...

I often tell my kids something that my Daddy told me a long time ago when I was a little bitty baby boy...he said "Son, if something appears to be too good to be true, it probably is.  I've been shopping 50mm lenses for a while and the going price for an AF 50mm f1.8 seems to be around $100 so what ever made me think I was going to get one in pristine condition for $40?  If it seems too good to be true........ Anyone out there got a manual focus Canon camera and need a 50mm lens?