Day 90 – Gear

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My in-laws went 100% digital many, many years ago.  While they had always dabbled with their digital camera & my father-in-law used it exclusively for his work, they could not give up their film cameras.  I understood at the time.  I used both for many years.  I always found point-and-shoot digital cameras made pictures look flat.  So, I always shot pictures both with digital and film.

Because I was not willing to give up film before my in-laws, we inherited all of their gear.  They had been collecting it for over 30 years by that point.  In the collection was at least 3 Minolta SLR bodies, about 6 lenses, and countless filters and such.  I should mention that this picture only shows about a third of the gear they gave us.  There are two more bags of it.  How did they get so much camera gear? As I mentioned in my birthday wishes, they lived in Japan when Garbanzo was born.  While they were there, they got most of their gear – cheap.

When I bought my Nikon D80 (digital SLR) a year ago, I had hoped that maybe I could use some of the old gear.  Some digital SLRs are compatible with the film SLRs.  But, not in my case.

I have gotten a lot of use out of the very nice tripods and unipods that they gave us.  And, the camera cleaning kid was also quite useful.  But, I’m realizing that I need to make a decision about this stuff as it is literally gathering dust.  A friend suggested eBay.  He had made enough selling old lenses that he was able to buy a couple of nice new lenses for his digital camera.  I have been looking at a new lens for my camera – a Nikon 50mm f/1.4D AF Lens to be precise.  My birthday is coming up, and Garbanzo is always complaining I won’t tell him what I want…why not leave a huge hint! 😉 

But, there is a part of me that wants to keep it for a while longer. I want my kids to understand what it is like to shoot film versus digital.  I don’t want them to be ignorant of it like most kids are of records these days.  Garbanzo has to usually show the kids what a record is when it comes up in a story or something because they have no idea.  Plus, they are still a great way to learn about photography.  So, I guess will stay with us a bit longer.

What do you think?

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