Bob wrote: Paul, You are a camera collector. I humbly disagree. If I were a collector, my collection would grow larger. Instead I've been shedding focal lengths (24, 85, 500) and duplicate focal lengths. It took me two or three purchases of each focal length to find out what I want, but once I found it, I sold the earlier purchases--sometimes at a profit, often at a small loss.
You know what launched my interest in 300mm and longer lenses? From inside the house, I saw my girls and their friend having a good time scooting down the driveway on a garden dolly. I went upstairs to shoot them with my 200 and found that I could have used something longer. All my purchases are driven by one goal: Preserve memories for the girls and their heirs. Unfortunately, when your interest is hard-to-find stuff, you can't know if you'll like something in advance. There simply isn't a specimen to try. Recently I've started to network with some local PDMLers. Geoff Moes let me try his SMC 15/3.5 PKA, for example, and once I did, I decided I was content with my Zenitar fisheye. It helped that Geoff said I could borrow it anytime. I'll be giving away one of my Super Programs to a relative, or perhaps selling it, leaving me with just three bodies. I like multiple bodies because I keep different film speeds in different bodies. Ditto for the pair of rangefinders, though there the situation is that one RF lives in my car. One reason I've avoided the LX and MX is that I fear I'd feel the urge to try every screen and what-not. Paul Franklin Stregevsky - 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 .
