I'm a camera idiot

[dr4b]

I'm in Osaka. I rode the shinkansen down here this afternoon after watching the first 2.5 Senbatsu games today. I'll be at Senbatsu (the spring HS baseball tourney at Koshien) the next few days.

I might have just done something dumb. See, the other day, I took photos at the Lions-Baystars game. They weren't very good. I've noticed over the last year that a lot of my photos have really been pretty crappy... and late last year I also noticed that there was some crap inside my lens, and possibly some chips on one of the lens glasses. But I couldn't take off the lens cover to try to get at it all anyway. Like, it seriously just wouldn't budge.

Well... tonight, in Osaka, I decided to stop by Yodobashi and ask them what to do about it, since I'm gonna be shooting HS baseball for 3 days. They looked at the lens... one guy got out a rubber circle thingy and managed to get the lens cover off, and then he and another clerk looked inside like "Wow, there's some hair stuck to that lens maybe... and some other stuff... and it looks chipped... how often have you dropped this thing?" I mean, the stuff wasn't even between the lens cover and the lens, but it's INSIDE several layers of the lens, and more than one have defects to them.

Anyway, it sounded like getting the lens repaired/cleaned/whatever was not only going to take a lot of time but was likely to actually cost much more than the lens is actually worth. Like, they were quoting it as probably being around 20,000 yen.

And they had this same lens, my 70-300 4-5.6 cheapo zoom that I've been using for 99% of my pictures over the last 5 years... for 15,000 yen.

So, I bought a new lens. I feel lame, because I'd been saying for ages that my next lens is going to be the 18-200 VR, dammit. But... I dunno, the 70-300 is what I'm really comfortable with. And it costs 1/6th what the 18-200 does.

And ooh, taking it out and looking at it, it's all like... NEW LENS! I really beat the living crap out of my 70-300 lens, seriously. This new one has no chips or dirt or crap or anything! The contacts look all nice and shiny! The lens hood actually attaches! Wow!

I just hope I don't mess it up. I have to try to make an effort to take better care of this one, hopefully. I suck at camera care to be honest, which is why most of the time I just carry my little pocket cameras and don't worry about dropping and killing them because I know I end up buying a new one once per year anyway. But I mean, this is SENBATSU and it is IMPORTANT, plus with the NPB doing day games to save energy I might actually be able to take some nice shots at real pro games as well over the next few weeks. (I know, it's silly, but I love baseball photography. Almost as much as I love baseball itself.)

And I guess I also hope it wasn't dumb to buy a new lens instead of trying to get the old one repaired/etc somehow. I'm just a moron about these kind of things sometimes, and like I said, I take terrible care of my camera equipment all things considered. I guess that's why I feel like buying a super-expensive lens would be a bad idea because I feel like I'd somehow destroy it, basically.

Comments

[isamum.livejournal.com]

You made the right move. A lens in that condition is worth NOTHING and it wouldn't surprise me if it cost 20,000-30,000 yen to fix (take apart, clean out, replace damaged elements and other parts, reassemble). I don't know if buying the exact same lens is a smart move (there is a better 70-300 AFS VR version that is incredibly sharp), but it is cheap enough that it's basically a throw-away lens.

[dr4b]

That's kinda what I figured. But the 70-300 VR was like 50,000 yen...

[februaryfour]

I think that you made the right choice, since your 70-300 has done amazingly over the years.

[zqfmbg.livejournal.com]

Getting the old one repaired isn't always guaranteed, especially if it's a 3rd party that's doing it. Getting a new one for less? That's a no-brainer. Just don't go winging it around. :)

(I have a 70-300 VR that is collecting dust these days, so if you do decide you're interested, let me know. It's great outside; it's just not useful inside when you're trying to take pictures of cats. ^^)

[tame-eep.livejournal.com]

You can only be so careful with a camera if you want to take pictures everywhere. Getting a couple of years of heavy use out of a flimsy lens seems like you did pretty well to me. The cheap plastic ones aren't really intended to repaired. The pro lenses are built to take a lot of abuse before breaking and are generally economical to repair when they do. The down side is that they cost 6x more (though they may last 6x longer) and they weigh 3x more.

It is too bad the the only choices for 300mm in Nikon are either cheap or extremely expensive. If you can live with shorter, the 80-200/2.8 AF is built like a tank and costs about the same as the 18-200 VR, and there are tons of good used ones floating around. The Sigma & Tokina equivalents are about as good and cheaper, too. Mine's been tackled, crashed into, dropped, banged into things, etc, and still works fine, so I doubt you'd be any more likely to destroy one than you are to destroy a hammer.