On Sat, Jul 06, 2013 at 07:26:55AM -0700, Aahz Maruch wrote: > > Right -- the question is whether I'll enjoy the glass enough over 5-10 > years. The way I think about stuff like this, I guess/calculate how much > it costs per hour. So a movie these days is about $10-$15/hour (ticket > plus munchies). So let's look at how much "basic" Pentax gear would cost > me, assuming I buy new (all Amazon prices, rounding to nearest $50): > > K-5 II with 18-135 WR $1150 > DA* 60-250 $1350 > D-FA 100mm macro WR $700 > > That's $3200, divide by $25/hour and that's 128 hours. So I'd need to > use that for at least 25 hours per year over five years to get my > money's worth. And that's rock-bottom minimum, I'd really want a > normal or wide-angle lens F2.8 or wider. Buying used would save some > money at the cost of time (keh.com doesn't have them all right now and a > used 60-250 isn't much cheaper than new). > > Then there's the fact that I rented two bodies for the cruise, and it's > really really handy to not switch lenses... > > Normally I wouldn't be quite so rigorous in my analysis, but that much > money makes me think, especially when I already have equipment that gives > me about eighty percent of this capability (and is significantly better > in some respects, namely bulk/weight/convenience: Nikon P7100, Canon G1X > with 250D closeup lens, and a Fuji X-S1 that arrives Tuesday). So > really, that's 25 hrs/yr *in addition* to what I'm already doing for > taking photos. Makes it a lot harder to justify to myself.
Aahz, It's a damn good thing for you that you aren't into something like racing. My first track time, 25 years ago, was at Bondurant, and it worked out to something like $100 per hour of track time. In retrospect, that was some of the cheapest track time I've had. If I were racing, and were honest about my expenses, in a cheap to run class, and not trying to win, I might be able to do it for as little as $300 per hour of track time. $600 for a lens? That's just a weekend of racing, and since I'm not racing these day... no problem! Then there's flying. One reason I never got my pilot's license is that flying makes racing look cheap. More seriously, certain levels of performance come with a cost. With some things, like sensors, the cost of performance gets cheaper over time. The entry level K500 will outperform any APS sensor camera of not that many years ago, and the full frame cameras from not long before that. Other things, well I used to know someone with a .sig that said "If it weren't for law enforcement and physics, I'd be unstoppable". If you want a lens with certain capabilities, physics says it has to be a certain size. -- Larry Colen [email protected] http://red4est.com/lrc -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
