Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The 10-Year Rule

Simply put, it is: "If you haven't used something even once in the last ten years, you should get rid of it." These are not easy words to live up to, particularly for someone like myself who has pack rat in his blood. But at least today I took a stab at it.

Gone are some Maxxum lenses from my Father's old Minolta SLR That hadn't been used since 1999. Also gone is the body of my Ancient Olympus OM1N SLR. This was probably last used in the mid 90s. I also have some Olympus-compatible lenses that I was going to sell, But I didn't, since they eventually prove useful.

The folks out at National Camera Exchange in Golden Valley were helpful in taking these items off my hands. I know I might have gotten more by selling the items someplace like EBay, but it seemed like too much hassle to do that. A week or so before I had taken the lenses to the MAS swap meet, but they generated no interest

It turns out that Olympus-compatible lenses can be fitted with an adapter enabling them to be used as Canon EOS lenses. No autofocusing or aperture control, but those are not important for astrophotography. So now I've got a bunch of lenses for using with my ST-83000M: 50mm f/1.8 Olympus; 50mm f/1.8 Canon; 17-70mm Sigma for Canon zoom; 135mm f/2.5 Tamron for Olympus; 400mm TeleAstranar f/6.3 (of dubious quality); 2X Vivitar Teleconverter for Olympus.

Before any of those can be mated to the ST-8300M, I need to get this. Hence the coupon clipping mentioned in an earlier blog entry. (The fund now stands at a about $110.) I'm particularly eager to try out the 17-70mm zoom and 135mm fixed focal length lenses.




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