Not too bad a day if I say so myself. There was a camera swap meet again this year in Burnaby, so me and dad once again headed out for a day of photo geeking. It was pretty good, and while I took a couple of hundred dollars in ca$h, I managed to walk away with the majority of it in my pocket. While I was quite lusting after a Pentax 17mm fisheye lense I found, I didn’t quite have the amount needed, however, maybe in a couple of paychecks I’ll give the guy a call. The fisheye results are pretty cool:
It’s also the widest lense I’ve seen for my camera, and kind of cool to see in person. I also found a 28-80mm Macro AF lense. Not the fastest in the world (F3.5-5.6), but it would make a worth replacement for the 28-80mm macro lense I have now which weighs about the same as my camera. So I checked it out (he was asking $75) and noticed that while it autofocused fine, the zoom ring didn’t zoom. After a bit of looking with the vender to see if we could figure out what was wrong. I wandered away. I would have bought it but $75 for something that’s not really working is a bit much. I came back later to see what it was and he had taken it a bit farther apart to find that there was a missing bit in a panel under the zoom ring. Again, pretty expensive to take a chance to see if something can be fixed. In the end I gave him $20 for it though, as even if I can’t get the zoom working, I have a perfectly working 80mm (that’s where it’s stuck), well, 120mm to be perfectly accurate with the digital conversion factor, macro lense. Good for portraits as well or so I’m told.
Anyway, that was my prize for the day. The tables were filled with fascinating people selling everything from a WW2 aircraft camera to digital cameras, cell phones (why are there always people with brand new packaged cell phones and accesories at these gigs?), a vast array of Leicas and their accesories, and everything in between. Lots of fun, can’t wait for next year!