It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Subscribe to our Patreon, and get image uploads with no ads on the site!
Base theme by DesignModo & ported to Powered by Vanilla by Chris Ireland, modified by the "theFB" team.
Comments
* Canon 5DS
* Canon 5DS R
* Canon G9X II (pocket camera)
* Canon 5D IV
* Canon 7D II
* Canon 5D II #2
* Canon 1D IV
I use them all, though the 5D II seldom. The three 5Ds do most of the heavy lifting.
Why so many?
Well first thing is that I do bird photography. You learn very quickly that it is essential to have your main birding rig available 100% of the time. The moment that you take your 400mm lens off to take a picture of a landscape or a wildflower, you can absolutely positively guarantee that some mega-rarity will pop up and sit there in perfect light laughing at you. So two cameras is a nevessity. At first this was a pair of Coolpix 4500s (one for digiscoping), then a 4500 and a Canon A95 for the scope, then a 20D and a 4500, and finally a pair of 20Ds
Then we get to the second reason. in 2005 or so, when my main camera was a then state-of-the-art 20D, I used to have a lot of trouble with dust on the sensor. (This was before the days of self-cleaning sensors, which came in a few years later with the 40D.) I did and still do a lot of outback trips and dust is a big issue. Changing lenses in the field used to be a serious business!
And the third reason: I replaced my cheap little 18-55 general purpose lens with a far better 24-105/4. On crop cameras, however, that 24mm wide end was not nearly wide enough for many landscapes. So it was back to lens changes and dust on the sensors. Yuk!
Then the rot set in. I bought a new Canon 400D for a friend of mine (coz I had my regular dealer and got a good discount from him) and naturally tried it out for a couple of weeks until I drove it over to his place a few hundred kilometres away. I stuck the 10-22 on it and it was *so* nice not having to change lenses in the dusty outback!
So I bought a 450D to go with the two 20Ds. Sold that, got a 40D, and from there the die was cast.
In short, I got used to the luxury of having and using multiple cameras back when there was a very good reason to do it that way, and now that technology has moved on and the reasons are less pressing, I haven't changed my ways. It's just plain nicer this way and I do things the nice way (unless I am space or weight constrained, such as when travelling by air).
I habitually travel with four cameras (5 if you count the G9X pocket camera in the glove box), one on each of the main birding lens (600/4, used to be a 500/4), second birding lens which doubles on landscapes (100-400), general-purpose lens (24-105) and wide angle (16-35, or sometimes the 10-17 fish). On foot, I mostly take two, sometimes three, occasionally only one. Mostly, I use the three 5Ds and either the 7D II or the 1D IV.
Sometimes - not often - a camera fails mid-trip. If you are out in the back blocks of Western Australia or the wrong side of Birdsville, you can't just pop into a shop and buy another one. So you need spares on-hand. (I also have spare lenses - I once did an entire Lake Eyre Basin trip including aerial photography minus my one and only general-purpose lens, a 24-104. I managed quite happily with the 35mm and 60mm macro lenses filling the gap between the 10-22 and the 100-400. Making that task easier (and the mental arithmetic more difficult!) was the fact that I was using three different crop factors at the time - 5D II (full frame), 1D IV (1.3), 7D & 50D (both 1,6) so you could juggle the combinations around to get the focal length you wanted.
But to address the OP's point more directly (that's you @Devil#20) - with old cameras do you sell or keep? I do a bit of both. Of the cameras listed above, I could sensibly sell the 5D II, but I'd be lucky to get a couple of hundred dollars for it, say 10% of the $2000-odd it cost me. Why bother?
But I have disposed of quite a few:
* Canon EOS R (mirrorless) (sold)
* Canon 7D (sold to family member)
* Canon 1D III (stolen)
* Canon 5D II #1 (stolen)
* Canon 50D (sold to family member)
* Canon 40D (sold to family member)
* Canon 40D (shutter blew up)
* Canon 450D (sold to family member)
* Canon 20D (sold)
* Canon 20D (did a zillion miles, wore out 2 shutters. I still have it as a keepsake)
* Canon Powershot A95 (pocket camera) (sold)
* Nikon Coolpix 4500 #2 (pocket camera) (blew up)
* Nikon Coolpix 4500 #1 (pocket camera) (not sure if this still works or not. I still have it somewhere)
The EOS R was a genuine piece of shit, despite some great aspects, on balance the worst Canon camera I have ever owned and after 18 months I sold it for $1800, having paid $3500 for it. Such is life.
Most of the others I sold to family members at attractive prices. They got a well-used but very competent camera - much better than anything they could buy new for the same money - and I got a few dollars and the knowledge that my camera had gone to a good home. That's a win-win.
And one or two blew up and were not worth repairing. Special mention to the 20D that happily did many more shutter actuations than Canon speced it for, finally blew the shutter, then did almost as many on the new shutter before expiring.
TLDR: I have lots of cameras. My car is 20 years old, I buy second-hand clothes from op shops, but I have nice cameras. And guitars, of course.
At the moment I have 3 Panasonic S5 bodies (two of them with Atomos Ninja V recorders), a crapload of native Panasonic lenses, a Fujifilm X100VI and a Ricoh GRIIIx. Do I still shoot most things on my phone? Yes, yes I do.
I do sometimes work in pro video though - if I didn't, I probably wouldn't have the amount of Panasonic gear I have.
Does this mean you can't take a reasonable picture with a telephone? Of course not. For easy tasks, any tool will do if it's handy. But people who think phone cameras are "just as good" only say that because they don't understand cameras. There is a huge difference.
(Many of those very same people might not know how to cook, btw, so the takeaway *is* superior. )
I also don’t understand your point about usability…. a mobile phone is the most usable camera I own. It’s just point, shoot and WYSIWYG via the screen. The shot can be easily tweaked afterwards too. What could be more usable than that?
Going back to the OP's original question, like with guitars, most enthusiasts have too many. I've been guilty of it myself in the past but I can do most of what I need to do with only a small handful of lenses and an even smaller number of bodies. If I need something unusual I'd rather rent it for a few days and save myself (over the long term) a lot of money.
Some people use their phone for much more than point and shoot though with surprisingly good results. I think as we invest in this tech and continue to want phone cams that can do more technical tasks we are going to see this tech advance quite quickly.
These Astro Photos Were All Shot with Smartphones | PetaPixel
Many guitars have a re-sale value. Some you'll never want to sell.
Stockist of: Earvana & Graphtech nuts, Faber Tonepros & Gotoh hardware, Fatcat bridges. Highwood Saddles.
Pickups from BKP, Oil City & Monty's pickups.
Expert guitar repairs and upgrades - fretwork our speciality! www.felineguitars.com. Facebook too!
However on analogue, I'm much worse, probably around 80 film cameras, mostly 35mm but some medium format and a fair few Polaroids.
I think all were bought second hand and I don't think I paid more than £5 each for the majority of them, they all work though, and I've run at least one pack of film through every one.
I do miss the days of finding camera gear in charity shops, I used to pick up Polaroid 600 cameras for a pound and take them to parties and then give them away when they only had a few shots left.
I have an Olympus em1 mark iii and am thinking of trading it in - I just don't need a camera that good. But it is so good... And it's the most comfy camera to hold that's not a Panasonic g9.
I mostly use the pen epl-7, which is much cooler and still has 16 MP which is big enough to print... Well, ginormous - billboards easily. Af is a bit slow but I don't mind.
I also have an ancient Sony dslr with a ccd sensor. This is where image quality often wasn't good enough. Still managed these, using minolta a mount lenses from the 1980s.
If fujifilm could somehow lower prices on used kit I'd trade all in for a xpro 3, 18mm lens, 27mm lens and 90mm lens. But I'd miss the epl7 and 12-40mm zoom, and the tiny Panasonic 20mm...
I suppose the point is, cameras are cool and you don't need to justify ownership. Old dslrs are cool. I reckon they'll go up in value at some point. Modern mirror less cameras are cool and push the boundaries of what photography is. It's all good!
There's another thing. Your best camera is the least useful in some ways. I don't like taking it away on holiday is case it goes AWOL (been there) and so I always take next best one. In my case that would be the D7200. The Z7 is the best camera but the D750 has way more available lenses without needing and adaptor. Hence the D7200 is the one I would take away with me unless I felt the camera would be safe.
Ian
Lowering my expectations has succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.