You know him/her. You may even have been him/her.
I will be the first to admit I like film cameras irrespective of what their purpose is. They are neat, precision mechanical devices. One of my happiest moments was when I finally got my brand spanking new Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic F after all the research and agonizing over the various alternatives. That and the nifty 55mm f1.8 screw mount lens that came with it. Half the fun was going to the camera store, looking at all the cool cameras, then pouring over all the glossy company literature day after day that was stuffed under my night stand on the floor. I especially was captivated by the discussion of Honeywell’s multilayered coatings used on its Super-Takumar lenses.
You can imagine how sad I was after the camera’s pentaprism got dented as a result of traveling with me when I happened to get into a little car accident. But I was happy again when I was able to save up and get its replacement, a brand new Nikkormat FTn with a 50mm f2 lens – the gateway into Nikon land! I couldn’t afford the Nikkormat the first time around, but I had it now!
The Spotmatic and Nikkormat were fine pieces of equipment and their lenses served me well. No doubt they still would!
Guess what … I have gone through a lot of gear. One of my friends has kindly called it equipment churn. But I don’t have a problem with trying new brands or different formats to see I how like them.
While it is true that you can make a great picture with any camera/lens, anyone that says there isn’t something special about the intimate relationship you have with a particular mechanical device and how it works is simply not telling the truth.
So there, I’ll say it; you should be one with your equipment and enjoy what you are using! I am, and I do!
But the demise of many dedicated brick and mortar camera stores has made it near impossible for many to touch and feel film cameras and their lenses. If you live in or near a large city maybe you still have a place to go with a decent used film camera case, but if not, you’re stuck purchasing online or over the phone, sight unseen.
Look, I have kissed a lot of frogs along the way, only to end up selling them because I felt they were too complicated to use, or they didn’t intuitively enable me to produce what I wanted to produce, etc. And I can honestly admit I don’t have a problem with that.
So what about GAS? I think GAS occurs when you have too many cameras and lenses that you don’t need, and acquiring them becomes the journey instead of actually getting out in the world and making pictures.
Let’s face it, it’s fun to buy things and certainly it’s not as scary as having to put yourself out there and possibly fail at what you set out to do, or not enjoy yourself because of unreasonable expectations you or others have created or instilled within you.
This is not to say that it’s wrong to own and use more than one format for different applications, or even two types of cameras of the same format, such as a rangefinder and a single lens reflex (I do). I think where things go haywire is when you start buying much more than you can ever reasonably use because you feel a need to have things that go beyond your true need to use them. That does not mean it’s a bad idea to own a lens that you may only use ten percent of the time.
There is nothing worse than being in a position where you need that lens to make the picture and you don’t have it. In fact, while it is well known that Henri Cartier-Bresson used the 50mm lens to make the vast majority of his wonderful pictures, he also used other lenses on occasion when the need called for them. On the other hand, the great photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt favored the 35mm lens, but also used others when necessary such as the 90mm for his iconic portrait of Marilyn Monroe.
The bottom line is that unless you require specialty focal length lenses for things like wildlife, you can pretty much conquer the world with just three lenses – the normal, the mild wide and the mild telephoto.
OK, so have I succumbed to the dreaded GAS? Of course I have and I can stand before you and admit it!
Its happened once or twice, but in the end I was able to fight off the demons lurking inside … like the time when I walked into the camera store and saw all those used but mint Leica R ROM lenses for my Leica R9 camera. I knew what they were, what they were worth and they were sitting there all in one location in front of me! Carrying a credit card can be a curse and before I knew it they were mine … mine! I honestly couldn’t help myself. Fabled fixed focal lengths and zooms I had never dreamed of using before — I was now fantasizing how I would employ them to enable me the flexibility to make pictures I had never made before or ever had an interest in making!
While I used a 50mm lens or its equivalent to make the vast majority of all my photographs, I made all the necessary justifications and the deed was done. Yes I made a Faustian bargain with the devil; the deal was too good to pass up and having them would make me a better photographer. Wrong! Once I had these Teutonic gems in my possession you can’t imagine what a distraction they became, not to mention how much space they took up in my camera bag and extra weight they added!
To make a long story short, after much self-inflicted angst, most were sold (although a few replaced my basic older and slower versions … I am only human you know!) and all was well again, financially and photographically.
