An idea has been posed to me, and I thought I'd get everyone's opinions,
particularly those in North America.
I 'think' I have an opportunity to buy a 350/2.8 with a 1.4x converter at a
decent price, as I mentioned. But, the cash outlay is still wildly out of
line with the amount of use it would get. While there is a certain appeal
at my children's events in pulling out a 'my lens is bigger than your lens',
I don't think the expense can be reasonably justified.
I could actually make a similar arguement for several of my lenses, such as
the 300/4.5, 90/2, 180/2.8, 500/8, 100/2, 21/2, well you get the idea. Well,
ok, I can justify the 21/2, as it's my favorite lens. Well, and the 90/2.
Those examples are just the ones from my current collection. How about the
400 and 600 on ebay right now, or the 1000 that Jaap is selling?!?!
So, here's the idea. What if we ALL owned, or had access to the more
specialized equipment. Not as a money making endeavor for anyone, but as a
cost sharing. Sort of like owning a 1/8 share in a private plane.
I'd be willing (insanity jumping in here) in fronting the money, meaning
buying most of the lenses and paying for the 'bulk' of them, perhaps not
100%, if we could come up with a reasonable financial algorithm that covered
a part of the cost.
The downside is that I'd be regularly running to the post office to ship
things, but if managed right, that's not a real crisis either. I go pretty
often as it is.
Even better would be an approach that spread the specialized equipment
amongst members, so that we each shared the cost burden and the effort
burden. Maybe you even buy-in to the co-op with the value of the equipment
you're putting into it.
Maybe this is an off-topic discussion, but I think maybe it's not. By
combining parts of our collections, we could potentially fill out the range.
Others probably own the 8, 16 and 18 and maybe the 400, 600 and 1000 that I
don't. Extending it, there's the macro lenses, the bellows, the slide
copiers, the ring flashes, well, the complete lineup. Even backup bodies
for important shoots.
If nothing else, this is an interesting tangent. Hey, when you're stuck
bored in a hospital room, your mind wanders.
Let me know what you think. General discussion could probably take place
here, but if you're truly interested, write me privately too and I'll add
you to an informal 'interested list'.
Tom
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