Summer Time and Resisting the Urge to Upgrade

Drooooooooooool

With summer comes annual rebates from Canon on lenses and DSLRs.  This is a hard time of year for me, as lenses, bodies, and accessories that were before just out of reach become tantalizingly, if barely, possible.  All of a sudden your lenses that served you well for thousands of shots aren’t good enough, or you start to think about what things you can live without to attain new things you think you can’t live without.

Of course, new gear does not a better photographer make.  I am not under the illusion that any of this swapping makes any meaningful difference in the quality of my images.  Indeed, of all the bodies and lenses I have used–Canon and Nikon–only one lens disappointed me with its performance, and I promptly sold it.  Still, new gear can spur creativity, getting one out of a creative rut or catalyzing a new series of exciting new images.  Some lenses allow you to do things in ways you couldn’t before, while others allow you to see things in new ways.  Ultimately, though, we are all chasing the end of the rainbow–the gear matters, but the eyes and the grey stuff behind the viewfinder matter more.

I am proud to say that I have managed to hold onto the same camera body for over a year, which is a first for me.  I have resisted the temptation to jump to a pro body or a 5DmkII even in the face of great temptation.  I have also, for the most part, managed to swap some lenses without spending any money–I therefore was able to tweak the kit a bit without putting any more undue strain on the family finances.  With a new baby, that would be foolish, indeed!

There are of course a few niche lenses that I still really lust after (this one, this one, and particularly this one), but none that I need, and certainly none that would be good value propositions relative to the use I’d get out of them.  So I think I’ll be laying low this summer rebate season, biding my time, reanalzying my kit over and over, until the right time comes for my next move.