I'm too much of a pussy for eBay.
For those of you who don't know, I recently started playing with an old Yashica Mat 124G TLR camera. It's a really good time, and looks oh so cool. If you don't believe me, check out some photos of one.
Moving on, I thought I'd buy a couple of extra lenses for it, since I can just about afford food for myself, and I'm really not overdrawn enough. ;-)
Voilá, I give you a link to the telephoto lens I bought and a link to the wide angle lens I bought. Both via eBay, and both fiercly contested at the last minute.
Now, I really don't like eBay.
It's not just the flea-market atmosphere, or the confusing descriptions, or the irritating "A+++" language... it's the whole competitive Capitalist bullshit thing that goes along with it. I must be a pussy. What else could explain my gut-wrenching guilt at having outbid some other guys for the items?
It didn't really help when one of them went on to email me with the following helpful message: "thanks... i needed those" (I quote verbatum). I haven't emailed him back yet, and I'm not sure if I want to. What can you say to that? Here's what Mark said: "seriously?? wtf reply and tell him to fuck off! you needed them too!"
Ah, but the really killer here is that I don't. I would really like them yes, but I'm by no means a professional (or for that matter even competent) photographer. So he's got me right there. He might have been some starving professional photographer with a wife and three, wait no two kids to feed, who works exclusively with his old Yashica Mat 124G (inherited from his father who was a photographer before him), and had a potentially lucrative client on the cards who absolutely had to have a wide-angle shot of an upmarket New York office suite for a catalogue.
I also feel a real affinity for the guy, which I couldn't put my finger on. Then it hit me: he uses an old Yashica TLR too. There can't be that many of us out there, so he's instantly some sort of photography brother of mine. Or something. I haven't really thought about it much, but it's something along those lines. Point is, I can relate to his plight.
I could have ruined his life.
Moving on, I thought I'd buy a couple of extra lenses for it, since I can just about afford food for myself, and I'm really not overdrawn enough. ;-)
Voilá, I give you a link to the telephoto lens I bought and a link to the wide angle lens I bought. Both via eBay, and both fiercly contested at the last minute.
Now, I really don't like eBay.
It's not just the flea-market atmosphere, or the confusing descriptions, or the irritating "A+++" language... it's the whole competitive Capitalist bullshit thing that goes along with it. I must be a pussy. What else could explain my gut-wrenching guilt at having outbid some other guys for the items?
It didn't really help when one of them went on to email me with the following helpful message: "thanks... i needed those" (I quote verbatum). I haven't emailed him back yet, and I'm not sure if I want to. What can you say to that? Here's what Mark said: "seriously?? wtf reply and tell him to fuck off! you needed them too!"
Ah, but the really killer here is that I don't. I would really like them yes, but I'm by no means a professional (or for that matter even competent) photographer. So he's got me right there. He might have been some starving professional photographer with a wife and three, wait no two kids to feed, who works exclusively with his old Yashica Mat 124G (inherited from his father who was a photographer before him), and had a potentially lucrative client on the cards who absolutely had to have a wide-angle shot of an upmarket New York office suite for a catalogue.
I also feel a real affinity for the guy, which I couldn't put my finger on. Then it hit me: he uses an old Yashica TLR too. There can't be that many of us out there, so he's instantly some sort of photography brother of mine. Or something. I haven't really thought about it much, but it's something along those lines. Point is, I can relate to his plight.
I could have ruined his life.