A defense of gear lust

Well, there's gear lust, and there's gear love...

I went through a decent amount of gear in the first decade of my getting "serious" about my own photography, although I spaced my system change-outs to every three years of so. Lots of SLR stuff, which is funny, because one of the cameras that was on the short list for my first "El Serioso" purchase, back in late '74-early '75, was a Leica M5; imagine all the metaphorical skirt-chasing that choice might've saved me! (Or so I like to think, anyway.)

But I've been "settled down" with my Hexars for six years now, with a small passel of fixed-lens cameras for lighter packing and the occasional desire for variety. I think my hardware lust has pretty much leveled off. My love of good gear, however, has never died.
 
Gear lust is bad in itself with one hobby but for some (me) when you lust for gear in 4-5 different activities it is just plain insane :bang:

Especially, on retirement .........

Another retiree and myself were just talking about GAS today at the skeet range just before we left to go to the gun shop :bang:
 
How about a distinction between lust and curiosity? The parallels with sex are exact.

Many young men (and, I'm told, many young women) are consumed with sexual curiosity; they'll try just about anything, with just about anyone, often several times in order to make sure.

Once they've tried it, they realize that some of it, they don't care for; that some bits are better than others; and that there's quite a lot to be said for consensus opinions, provided they're reasonably broad minded.

Quite unlike cameras, then...

Cheers,

R.
 
There is no defence for gear lust ... only acceptance! Just when you think you've controlled the urge to buy more cameras than you need or can ever use regularly ... lens lust hits! I find myself wanting lenses more these days.

I recently bought a beautiful 1.4 50mm Nikkor ... it happened to have an immaculate Nikon S2 Black Dial attached to it unfortunately but I recalibrated my values and accepted the compromise! 😛
 
Roger Hicks said:
How about a distinction between lust and curiosity? The parallels with sex are exact.

Many young men (and, I'm told, many young women) are consumed with sexual curiosity; they'll try just about anything, with just about anyone, often several times in order to make sure.
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Ha! I don't know if I'm a young man anymore, but I'm afraid I'm the same way about sex. Except I never act on it, because I'm happily married. Maybe I'm channeling it all into gear.

Or maybe Joe and his compadre Freud are right, and it's all castration anxiety.
 
Andrew Sowerby said:
Often when I think about buying some new gear I look through my Flickr account and ask, would a Summilux (or whatever) have made this picture any better? The answer is pretty much invariably "no". Sometimes that stops me from pulling the trigger on another purchase. Not always though ...
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When I look through my Flickr account and ask the same question, the answer is invariably always "YES"...
 
Keith said:
There is no defence for gear lust ... only acceptance! Just when you think you've controlled the urge to buy more cameras than you need or can ever use regularly ... lens lust hits! I find myself wanting lenses more these days.

I recently bought a beautiful 1.4 50mm Nikkor ... it happened to have an immaculate Nikon S2 Black Dial attached to it unfortunately but I recalibrated my values and accepted the compromise! 😛
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Exactly like I did yesterday. There was this lovely J9 for sale. After reading all the good things about this lens here on RFF, I bought it. The fact that its lens cap was a nice chrome 3-lug M5 couldn't stop me.
 
noimmunity said:
I have gone through a similar process with backpacking gear, dialing in my kit to a minimum weight and simplicity. It is impossible to know what works best for oneself until you try many things out.

I'm with you. Whether it be winding through crowds on a street, crossing a stream rock by rock, or covering events, I want small and light. A DSLR is out of the question. I'm using my IIIf with a Summaron more and more. You need good gear for sure, but you need utility as well.

As far as guitars go. I bought three last month, a 335, a Tele, and a Parker Fly. The guilt won't quit and I'll keep them all until I get strapped. Must be the artist in me.
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Dektol Dan said:
As far as guitars go. I bought three last month, a 335, a Tele, and a Parker Fly. The guilt won't quit and I'll keep them all until I get strapped. Must be the artist in me.
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That's a nice diverse stable right there. My last one is a goldtop Tokai Love Rock. Awesome.

I really like my DSLR, especially for macro and tele. But I would love, love, love an affordable digital RF to supplement the film ones. That's probably the one additional thing I would really dig.
 
OK, here's my story...

OK, here's my story...

Way back when I was a young mother my (now) ex husband traded a car we didn't use for a Mamiya Sekor 500DTL; prior to that I used a Minolta RF my dad gave me and box cameras, a kodak instamatic... that SLR came with one 55mm lens and that's all I had and could afford. When the meter went bad on the 500DTL I went to a hardbody polaroid and the instamatics and a Yashica Autofocus S (a really good camera, but no low light without flash) and then one day my budget got better and I bought some Pentax gear and a few lenses and used them til Canon came out with the 300D with lens for less than a grand. By now my kids are grown, I've divorced the ex and my budget is good....more lenses, more Canon digital bodies... gave away all the analog gear... more Canon bodies, a Pentax DSLR and... one day I was bored and it was HOT out for weeks so I started scanning my old negatives and found my old stuff was pretty interesting... so I bought a Mamiya Sekor 1000DTL with 55 f/1.4 lens and some other stuff and, since I have a good income and I CAN, I just decided to try out as much stuff as I want.
I truly don't get why buying stuff to mess around with it is anyone's business buy your own. My "obsession" is what keeps my brain sharp and my life interesting.

Mary in SW Florida
Canon: 5D;40D;30D;20D;300D;16-35L;400L;80-200L;100f/2.8;85f/1.8;50f/1.4;28f/1.8;20f/2.8;28-135IS;
Pentax: K10D and kit lens; 50f/1.4; various M42 lenses and Kmount lenses
Mamiya-Sekor 1000DTL; RB67;Pentax Spotmatic;Leicaflex SL; Canon QLGlll 17;Vivitar35ES; Ricoh Diacord;Mamiya SIX folder; Polaroids; Kodak duaflexes; Welta Weltax; Zorki4, Fed3b, BessaR...probably more 😎
 
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mabelsound said:
Ha! I don't know if I'm a young man anymore, but I'm afraid I'm the same way about sex. Except I never act on it, because I'm happily married.
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That was my point, really. You're happier married than you would be screwing around. Otherwise, why would you stick with marriage?

Well, all right, there's less opportunity as you get older, and possibly a bit more consideration for the people you'd be screwing around with. But even so, I'd still consider the parallel to be pretty close. From time to time, of course I fancy new gear. But basically, I'm happier sticking with the Leicas I have (and occasionally adding to them), than I would be if I were endlessly buying and selling cameras.

I'd rather have my wife than a string of girlfriends, and I'd rather have the Leicas than a new DSLR every year, or 40 different FSU cameras and associated lenses, each of which cost very little, but which would have allowed their owner to buy a decent Leica outfit if he hadn't frittered his money away on 'bargains'.

Mind you, that's because I'm more interested in taking pictures than accumulating gear. Camera collecting is a perfectly understandable hobby, but it is only tangentially related to photography.

Cheers,

R.
 
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Roger, you'll pardon me if

Roger, you'll pardon me if

I take your words that folks who accumulate gear are in any way less interested in the making of photographs/photography. You seem to be saying that.

Mary in SW Florida (I have over 4000 photos online, so I think I'm accurate when I say I'm interested in photography.)
 
HuubL said:
Exactly like I did yesterday. There was this lovely J9 for sale. After reading all the good things about this lens here on RFF, I bought it. The fact that its lens cap was a nice chrome 3-lug M5 couldn't stop me.
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I'm so glad you understand the dillema ... we all know how hard it is to get a decent rear lens cap for a Nikon rangefinder lens ... or a J9 for that matter! 😛
 
imajypsee said:
I take your words that folks who accumulate gear are in any way less interested in the making of photographs/photography. You seem to be saying that.

Mary in SW Florida (I have over 4000 photos online, so I think I'm accurate when I say I'm interested in photography.)
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That's a pretty common sentiment. People tend to get their backs up about it, but if you take good pictures no one cares how many (or few) cameras you have. Trying to draw a correlation between quantity of cameras and quality of photographs is pretty useless, IMO. The pictures speak for themselves.

BTW I browsed through a bit of your online gallery. I like the 1971 bussing protest series.
 
Mabelsound, I think your initial statement in defense of gear lust is very nicely said! The difference with me is that I'm not good at selling stuff, so it just accumulates. In compensation, though, I'm very careful in the shopping side of things.
 
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