The joy of eBay

Lately, I've been finding that my photography is a decent pressure relief at weekends. I'm spending my spare time travelling out to local sites of interest, equipped with a camera and a few lenses, to experiment with different approaches to landscapes and architecture.

Now we are in the last few weeks of winter before spring pops up. The sun is still low in the afternoon sky, and the sky is crisp, cold and blue. I'm enjoying composing images with light, aperture, shutter and a very sparing use of Photoshop, as shown above. I've also been asked by a friend to photograph his wedding this coming August. So there seems to be a useful outlet to give me something to distract from work.

So, I thought, if I'm going to be doing this kind of thing more often, should I at least do it properly? I have photographed a number of weddings over the last two years, for friends and family, from whom I would not accept any form of payment. But, if people are starting to come to me on the basis of word of mouth, what do I do? I'm not a professional, offering the full service at £2000 a go. I don't have time to run a business. I take photographs because I enjoy it, and because I enjoy giving my friends and family a full set of formal and informal pictures without them having to worry about the costs, which are exorbitant for weddings these days.

But, I thought, I need to be properly equipped for the kind of photographs that they want. That means a better wide-angle lens, more suitable for low light than the zoom lens (not bad) that I bought with my new Nikon D50 2 years ago. So down this road I went, buying an excellent wide angle lens, the results of which are shown above.

A friend and colleague suggested I might invest in a second-hand wet film camera body, just for those special occasions. His own work is far better than mine, so I thought, why not? When I was a kid, I always looked up to the serious photographers and photojournalists who used the Nikon FM2, a rugged, simple, fully manual design with a shutter speed designed for taking action shots. So I went for it. So where did this quest take me: eBay. Now, apparently, the great bazaar and forum of second-hand cameras and kit. Stuff that used to fill the shelves of photographer's shops up and down the land is now traded electronically, while the local shops themselves are in decline.

So, off I went to set up my account, identify what the going rate was for the camera I was after, and start bidding. Easy, peasy, I thought, set up a reasonable bid, and wait to see what happened. Twice, I was within ten-twenty seconds of landing what I was after, only to get two successive emails telling me that I had been outbid, and that the item had now been sold. Eventually, at the fourth opportunity, I made a bid and left it to run it's course while I went to my Wednesday night yoga class. On getting home, I found I was the proud owner of a second-hand FM2 body. So far, so good. But herein lies a quandary.

New Nikon lenses are made for their autofocus cameras. My fixed-focal length lenses are of an older design interchangeable between my modern digital SLR and the FM2. My newer lenses are not. They have no capability to change the aperture setting manually. This is done entirely by the camera. They also have very sensitive manual focus rings, and are designed for almost entirely auto-focus, auto-exposure operation.

So, back to eBay, to get a backward-compatible replacement for my longer focal-length zoom lens. The older lens is now out of production, as newer versions have motors to reduce vibration. The glass is still very good, and the lenses are spectacularly capable. They're in high demand, and the last-second bidding even more savage. But I got one. Now for the fun of selling my
previous kit lens, unless anyone reading here can offer it a good home.