What an ebay RUSH I just had.... I enabled myself tonight to buy an kewl PENTAX screwmount lens, 135-600mm F6.7 Super-Multi-Coated-Zoom Takumar:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1332161161 This monster will be good for the horse races where I usually used a 400 or 500mm. The wide zoom range of over 4:1 should be very useful. I sniper bid with about 15 seconds left on the auction and got it for a "good" price ($995). This is the most expensive lens I've ever bought so I had to think about it quite a bit before bidding. It's not very fast and isnt very balanced on a tripod, but I'll be using it with monopod. I may build a special bracket for tripod use if needed. Here was my line of "enablement" thinking: I looked this lens up in a 1974 Pentax brochure I have and found the list price to be $2000 ! But remember that was $2000 in 1974. I then went to a consumer price index website that has a calculator for converting the value of the dollar between different years: http://minneapolisfed.org/economy/calc/cpihome.html As it turns out $2000 list in 1974 was equal to $7322 list in year 2002. This was one EXPENSIVE lens in its day, which accounts for its rarity. I cant wait to take it out for a test drive... I noticed some other very high list prices on Pentax equipment in 1974. For example an ESII w/50mm F1.4 SMCT listed for $650. Thats equivilant to $2379 today , The ESII was an extremely expensive camera in its day too. How in the hell did they sell so many with such high ( at least list ) prices. It would be interesting to find out what the street prices were back then, does anyone have some old "popular photography" magazines from the middle seventies???? JCO - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
