OT: Sometimes it just doesn't pay to be the guru...

[drmatthes]

Funny thing is, nearly everybody drives a car, and nobody would think that when you have used it for 13 years and driven some 157.000 kilometers (like I have done to my VW Golf III) you would get a hell lotta money when you try to sell it.

The point is, keep it for another 35 years in your garage and do CLAs on a regular basis and then try to sell it, this might well be a different story.

Boy, are we lucky that RFs don't need a garage (sorry, except for those who have already occupied the living room, the basement, the attic, the self-storage place...)

Jesko

 

[amateriat]

Nope. I drink wine. 😉

I vacillate between the diplomatic approach and the direct, if a bit brutal approach. I lean toward the latter for two reasons. First, life is a bit short and I've lived long enough to be a curmudgeon. Second, if I am direct with the idiots who only really want confirmation, not a valuable opinion borne of experience, will be "offended" enough (their problem, not mine) that they won't come back later with their shiny, new sorry excuse for a "camera", expecting me to ooh and ahh over it, heaping praise on their empty heads. :angel:

Now please pass the cabernet.

Well, I'm lifting a glass of (mostly) Garnacha to you as I write this. Sometimes yours is the only good approach to requests for "advice".


- Barrett

 

[SolaresLarrave]

I guess now I understand the reason why a demeted internet seller was asking $1,600 for a Nikon AF N65 and three lenses (one of them a much disparaged 28-80 f4-5.6). Must have been the fellow in the church.

Or his cousin! 🙂

Thanks, Bill! Great story! 😀

 

[amateriat]

Deep in the frozen January 20, 2002 (well, it felt frozen to me), I dragged in my entire AF SLR system, including a pair of Minolta Maxxum 9xi bodies, and two of the best AF zooms in existence (28-70mm f/2.8 G & 80-200 f/2.8 APO) to my favorite little camera store in Chelsea (no longer existing in brick-n-mortar form) along with a Konica Hexar AF kit, for my first Hexar RF body and a 28mm f/2.8 M-Hexanon, both new. Some thought I was nucking futs, pitching an entire pro SLR setup overboard for one camera and one lens, and, for Dog's sake, not even autofocus, or even digital. It wasn't even a friggin' SLR!

"I'm tired of draggging all this (expletive deleted) around", I said. "An M7 would be nice, but I likte this Konica, and it's cheap enough to build a system out of if I decide I like it". That was my story at the time, and I stuck to it. Little did I know that I sold my film SLR gear at a fortuitous time. I wasn't thinking about how far the value of my gear would plummet in four years' time. I couldn't foretell Konica Minolta's merger and subequent withdrawal from the photography business (O how I wish I wish I wish that merger didn't happen...I actually believe Minolta might've sunk by themselves otherwise, but I use their best 35mm film scanner...damn, cant win at this, can I?). I just felt that a big change was in order (losing my job two months earlier, in the big wake of 9/11, pushed things along a bit, of course). Simplify, simplify...

Looking back, photographically speaking at least, it was the best descision I think I've ever made. But it does takes a bit of time to figure that out. 🙂


- Barrett