What would you do if you had to start again? - inspired by Harry the K

[Yokosuka Mike]

If all my stuff was lost in a disaster and I had to start over...

I turned 70 this year and my wife and I have been slowly downsizing our belongings. It's amazing how much one can accumulate over the years; things that we can easily live without; things that wouldn't be missed if they were gone. So, with that state-of-mind in place if I had to buy new camera gear the first thing I'd buy would be a Fujifilm X100VI. After that I'd buy a Fujifilm X-T5 camera and these lenses:

Fujinon XF 16mm f2.8 R WR lens
Fujinon XF 18mm f1.4 R LM WR lens
Fujinon XF 23mm f1.4 R LM WR lens
Fujinon XF 33mm f1.4 R LM WR lens

That would be the end of it. I would miss my Fujifilm GFX gear and I would really miss my Sony cameras and the Sigma and Voigtländer lenses I use on them but
"C'est la vie" I will learn to use what I have and live with out the rest.

I hate to say it but this scenario sounds refreshing and liberating.

All the best,
Mike

 

[JeffS7444]

Film-revival purchases: No real regrets, because I (mostly) watched my expenditures, and have periodically thinned the herd. Why I still have no fewer than 5 Zenit cameras is another matter.

 

[Doug A]

If I lost everything in a disaster cameras would not be an issue. I would just buy a Leica IIIg with a 50/2 Summicron and a 90/4 Elmar. I would buy a new Digisix meter and I would be good to go.

I would be unhappy about losing all my father's negatives and mine but I have high resolution RAW scans of all of them on the desktop of my MacBook and all of the desktop files are backed up in the cloud.

Almost all of my film developing gear would be easily replaced on eBay. (The one thing that would be hard to find would be the Kinderman developing tank filling funnel.)

I would have to buy a new easy35 scanning rig, a 40/4 Nikon enlarging lens, and the assortment of step-up and adaptor rings I need to make the enlarging lens work with the easy35.

All in all, I think I could be back up and running in a month or two.

 

[Pioneer]

Given what I know now from my photographic experience, what would I do if I could start completely over?

To be brutally honest I am not sure it would change anything.

But, under the assumption that it could, Knowing what I know now I would buy a Barnack Leica (Leica III?) or a Leica M (Leica M-A?) and a decent set of lenses (35mm, 50mm, 75 or 90mm). A lifetime supply of Kodak TMX 100 (whatever that is for a 70 year old man) and developing chemicals. A Leitz Focomat V35 enlarger with a Focomat 40/2.8 lens (no computers or digital printers thank you very much.) A lifetime supply of 8x10 and 11x14 paper (something from Ilford but with a bit more selection than I want in my film.) A decent darkroom that provides room to work (I am getting a little tired of cleaning the 2nd bath every time I use it.)

This is an interesting thought exercise but I am afraid though that I would eventually end up where I am now. After two or three years I start to become bored and go looking for something else. Right now I am using a Pentax MZ-S with Limited lenses, but knowing myself that probably won't last longer than two or three years either. The problem isn't with the gear or the photography. As always it is with the photographer!

 

[Tim Murphy]

Dear Board,

While I haven't lost any gear I sort of made the decision to somewhat start over. To that end I bought a reconditioned Canonet 2.8 and Canolite D from an eBay seller I've dealt with before. They haven't arrived yet but that was the first "good" camera I ever owned as a teenager after having outgrown a Polaroid Square Shooter and an Instamatic.

I enjoyed my Canonet, and I hope I get some of the same results and feelings with the new used one.

Regards,

Tim Murphy 🙂

 

[DownUnder]

I've posted my own thoughts about all this elsewhere here, so the story that follows is secondhand.

A fruend-neighbour in AUS turned 70 and retired, finally. His wife had left him a few months before (no surprise to any of us or to him, it had been coming for a long time) and he decided to downsize everything. Sold the house and moved to a small apartment in my block. It was a lot of work and we did all we could to help. He was as happy as anything.

Got burgled a few months ago, while he was away on a camping trip. Cameras, laptops, PCs, electrical, all gone. Police seem aware of who did it but sublimely disinterested, wanted to know only if he was insured, which thankfully was yes. Insurance company paid out in full, no quibbles. (When I was told this I at once changed insurers from my old one to his.)

He had been playing with my cameras for a while, and after pondering his situation he bought as follows -

A Contax G1. A Sonnar 35/2.0. A Sonnar 90/2.8. A leather camera strap. Lens hoods and filters. And a gorgeous carry bag.

Has now gone on a round the world tour with this gear. And 40 rolls of Ilford HP5. Happy as Larry, whoever Larry is...

Last I heard he was in Victoria, British Columbia. And he met a widow close to his age with a Nikon F kit. She will now be traveling with him for the rest of his journey. A new romance, maybe a new life is in the works. Good on both of them!!

Change can be liberating. As the Buddhists say, opening and closing an old door can take you into a new room with other doors to be opened and closed. The choice is basically yours. If one door takes you somewhere you don't care for, go back and open another door.

As in so much in life, with an open mind and a little disposable cash, the possibilities are endless.

 

[Archiver]

I've posted my own thoughts about all this elsewhere here, so the story that follows is secondhand.

A fruend-neighbour in AUS turned 70 and retired, finally. His wife had left him a few months before (no surprise to any of us or to him, it had been coming for a long time) and he decided to downsize everything. Sold the house and moved to a small apartment in my block. It was a lot of work and we did all we could to help. He was as happy as anything.

Yay! 😄

Got burgled a few months ago, while he was away on a camping trip. Cameras, laptops, PCs, electrical, all gone. Police seem aware of who did it but sublimely disinterested, wanted to know only if he was insured, which thankfully was yes. Insurance company paid out in full, no quibbles. (When I was told this I at once changed insurers from my old one to his.)

Oh no... 😡

He had been playing with my cameras for a while, and after pondering his situation he bought as follows -

A Contax G1. A Sonnar 35/2.0. A Sonnar 90/2.8. A leather camera strap. Lens hoods and filters. And a gorgeous carry bag.

Wow! 😍

Has now gone on a round the world tour with this gear. And 40 rolls of Ilford HP5. Happy as Larry, whoever Larry is...

Last I heard he was in Victoria, British Columbia. And he met a widow close to his age with a Nikon F kit. She will now be traveling with him for the rest of his journey. A new romance, maybe a new life is in the works. Good on both of them!!

Yay! 👫

Change can be liberating. As the Buddhists say, opening and closing an old door can take you into a new room with other doors to be opened and closed. The choice is basically yours. If one door takes you somewhere you don't care for, go back and open another door.

I like this philosophy!

As in so much in life, with an open mind and a little disposable cash, the possibilities are endless.

A good ending to a story with a very bad turn. I love that his purchase of a G1 led him to meet someone with a Nikon kit! Truly, life works in some remarkable ways sometimes. Had his gear not been stolen, he would not have had a champagne gold G1 to catch the eye of his Nikonette.

 

[Godfrey]

Given a disaster that wiped out my equipment AND my photo archives:

- The latter is an irretrievable loss. Some things I have archived as books but the vast, vast majority would simply be gone forever other than what I've posted on line.
- Precisely what cameras I'd re-populate my equipment with is a question mark. I suspect I'd at least like my Leica M10 Monochrom back, and in the film camera mess I'd probably want much less than I have now; the Plaubel Makina 67 seems right, as well as a Rollei 35S to have something pocketable. That would likely be enough.
- Of course, I'd need my minimalist film processing outfit and a computer with Lightroom Classic on it. Et cetera.

I think I would move forward from there with just making photos and not worry too much about what else was lost. After all, it's just gear.

G

 

[JeffS7444]

How restrained would I be if I had to do it over? Probably about the same as the last time🤣I seem particularly drawn to "cheap and cheerful" stuff no one else wants.

 

[wlewisiii]

Personally I love the fantasy of the "do over" from when I began photography. What if I could put my now brain in my 18 year old body? Be an 84B stills photography specialist for Uncle and get job with AP after 4 years. Use my sign up bonus to buy Nikon RF because who wanted that in 1982? And Uncle would issue me SLRs as would AP later. Might have been fun. Or I might have been dead in some stupid war someplace. Shrug.

 

[raydm6]

Getting close to retirement age myself and time is being compressed and moving fast.

I would miss my Leica M’s, IIIf’s, and glass - but I would simplify:

- Rolleicord for B&W
- iPhone du jour for color

 

[wlewisiii]

Getting close to retirement age myself and time is being compressed and moving fast.

I would miss my Leica M’s, IIIf’s, and glass - but I would simplify:

- Rolleicord for B&W
- iPhone du jour for color

I used to think that about a cord. Then I actually got an (old, not very advanced but OMG it really is so much F***ing better)Rolleiflex Automat from 1938 and I gave away my cord to someone who had no Rollei at all. But even in a "start from scratch" situation, I'd find an old beater and work with it because an Automat is just so much nicer to use than a 'cord. Feeding the film through the rollers rather than lining up the stupid arrows saves so much time...

 

[boojum]

I have screwed around with sailboats and with motorcycles. With each there is the philosophy of trading up, buy bigger and better on the way up to the one you want. The incremental costs are lower. But there are a lot of incremental costs. OTOH you can just go for the best you can afford and then some and be done with it and not have to go through all the less-thans along the way. And the money lost on the trades along the way as we rarely sell for what we paid.

I used to know a fellow, Kurt, who was back seat in a F-4 and a little crazy as guys in fighter jets can sometimes be. His motto was, "If you go, go first class. If you run out of money just come home early." If I were staring over it would be with the very best I could afford and then some. Eliminate the intermediate stuff you are going to get rid of anyway. We have to be happy with the tools we use.

 

[wlewisiii]

I learned to sail as a high school kid, about the same time I learned to ride a bike. Cycles were bad enough! I stayed on two wheels for a couple of decades but I never owned my own sail boat. The old "joke" that a sail boat is a hole in the water you shovel money in to? It is NOT a joke. I owned an old school Triumph. It was easy and cheap to keep running compared to the people I knew with boats - even the Lukas electrics stuff. I'll still take Lukas over any sailboat, any day.

If you have never stripped a wooden deck, trust me, rewiring a motorcycle is a breeze!

 

[wlewisiii]

I have screwed around with sailboats and with motorcycles. With each there is the philosophy of trading up, buy bigger and better on the way up to the one you want. The incremental costs are lower. But there are a lot of incremental costs. OTOH you can just go for the best you can afford and then some and be done with it and not have to go through all the less-thans along the way. And the money lost on the trades along the way as we rarely sell for what we paid.

I used to know a fellow, Kurt, who was back seat in a F-4 and a little crazy as guys in fighter jets can sometimes be. His motto was, "If you go, go first class. If you run out of money just come home early." If I were staring over it would be with the very best I could afford and then some. Eliminate the intermediate stuff you are going to get rid of anyway. We have to be happy with the tools we use.

No. Buy the best you can get when you can and then make the best it CAN be. I could not afford Nikon for decades. But I can guarantee you that my Canon FD work was not in any way inferior to the guys that had Nikon F. Know your tools; know what the boss wants; and most importantly, know what the _customer_ wants. If you can get the trifecta, exccellent, more power to you. But the end, _only_ the customer matters.

 

[boojum]

No. Buy the best you can get when you can and then make the best it CAN be. I could not afford Nikon for decades. But I can guarantee you that my Canon FD work was not in any way inferior to the guys that had Nikon F. Know your tools; know what the boss wants; and most importantly, know what the _customer_ wants. If you can get the trifecta, exccellent, more power to you. But the end, _only_ the customer matters.

I think we are saying the same thing.

Bikes, I had a CB 77, the an R69S and then an R100RT. The R69S was the best bike I ever rode. Went from CT to CA in six days on it with not a complaint. Beemers just run. I just had the Pearson 26 on SF Bay. Glass so no wooden deck. I could just drive up to SF, take it out for a day and come home, hose it down and drive back to Palo Alto. Joss Wilson came by every other month to wipe the slime off the hull for a fee.

Sailing on SF Bay is about as good as it gets. The winds are seldom below 25 knots so you won't get stranded from lack of breeze. The run back from the Golden Gate with SF off the starboard side with a good lunch is life lived well. The view is the same from a 26' Pearson as it is from a 45' Nautors Swan. Cold and foggy on the south side of the Bay, warm and sunny on the north side. It was great, just great. Sailing is simple: just don't run the pointy end into anything harder than it is. ;o)

I have been lucky and had some really fun times. And survived my really stupid times. If life were fair I'd be dead.

 

[DownUnder]

If I lost everything in a disaster cameras would not be an issue. I would just buy a Leica IIIg with a 50/2 Summicron and a 90/4 Elmar. I would buy a new Digisix meter and I would be good to go.

I would be unhappy about losing all my father's negatives and mine but I have high resolution RAW scans of all of them on the desktop of my MacBook and all of the desktop files are backed up in the cloud.

Almost all of my film developing gear would be easily replaced on eBay. (The one thing that would be hard to find would be the Kinderman developing tank filling funnel.)

I would have to buy a new easy35 scanning rig, a 40/4 Nikon enlarging lens, and the assortment of step-up and adaptor rings I need to make the enlarging lens work with the easy35.

All in all, I think I could be back up and running in a month or two.

Sensible, this. A lot of what you wrote is my new plan for the latter half of 2025 and into 2026, as I'm now at the age where I have to consider the 'legacy' (f there is any) of my photo work, and what I want to do with the masses of good architectural and documentary images I've made since the 1960s.

As you wrote, cameras are replaceable. Almost everything in our lives is. Friends who lost their home and everything in it in the horrible 2009 bush fires in Victoria (Australia) were initially devastated, but within a year they had rebuilt their home and acquired new things and their lives were again on an even keel. Old keepsakes, family heirlooms and images are of course irreplaceable, but as Doug A wrote, it's a good plan to have backups of this material stored in safe places. Which I've done with some of mine, but with 100,000+ film images and more than this in digital the work could easily eat up what little time remains of my life. Death by scanning isn't my preferred way to pass away...

The way of course is to plan and sort and prioritise to do the most important items first. Which I'm now starting to do.

Many thanks to Doug A for some excellent ideas on his part. Much good food for thought...

 

[JeffS7444]

OTOH you can just go for the best you can afford and then some and be done with it and not have to go through all the less-thans along the way. And the money lost on the trades along the way as we rarely sell for what we paid.

I like the sentiment. If only I knew what The Best" was from the very start, and I never changed my mind!

 

[Godfrey]

I like the sentiment. If only I knew what The Best" was from the very start, and I never changed my mind!

Well, if you were to suffer the catastrophe of loss upon which this thread is predicated, you have lost the equipment but not the knowledge you've already learned. So you can just start with what you've already found to satisfy your shooting needs as your starting point. 😀

G

 

[boojum]

I like the sentiment. If only I knew what The Best" was from the very start, and I never changed my mind!

True, but we are not talking about the very start. We are talking about restarting after a disaster. By the time you have attained your majority you will have an idea of what "The Best" is. And you can ask around if you need help. Or better, hang around RFF. Lots of opinions and help here and a lot of it is good.