The Cheapie Tele-Zooms

So you haven’t spent any money on photography stuff in recent times (‘cause you ain’t got any money in recent times), but you’re itchin’ with some old-fashioned gear-acquisition-syndrome. What’d you do?

I don’t know about you, but I would head towards ebay with the noble intention of scratching that itch. Here’s how it ended:

These are not recent acquisitions: these purchases happened a year back (as evidenced by the sale date), before acquiring the ruskie lens. Predictably enough, once the fancy withered, all these lenses have mostly been sitting around, waiting to be actually used.

The $1.95 lens is a looker (both of them are quite the lookers, in fact – I think they both look a lot more than what I actually paid for them, and I say this with the slightest of buyer’s remorse), but the pictures from it looked really bad, even by my rather relaxed standards of what is acceptable quality as far as cameras and lenses are concerned.

Below is a picture from the $1.95 lens - while it is a solidly constructed lens with a certain heft, the optics appear to be about as good as… plastic. I have seen better pictures from a Holga. I do seem to have acquired a rather fancy paperweight, but that is okay, that is the price you pay for cheap.

The $9.99 lens, on the other hand, works quite well. Lately I have been having fun shooting my favorite, always-handy, models:

Last year, for Onam, we drove to West Lafayette to meet friends at Purdue University. There was a nice Ona Sadya and stuff, and I took some pictures of those folks with the $9.99 lens. I think this could work well for portraits… when folks are sitting still and the light is right.

It is highly likely that this lens is going to sit in some closet for quite some time, but hopefully not all the time. Let’s see.