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.

Clip and Save

I'll admit to being a very frugal person. I have very few hobbies, and the only one on which I've spent an appreciable amount of money is Astronomy. Which you probably could already guess.

Back somewhere around 2003 I went to a local star party hosted by the MNAA. If you know the MNAA, "star party" is probably too formal a phrase for their get-togethers. I took along my Orion XT-10 Dob. One of the MNAA members let me try his Tele-Vue 31mm Type 5 Nagler with an OIII filter. At that point I had neither. If you know your eyepieces, you know that around then the 31 was one of the most expensive eyepieces around, and possibly one of  the heaviest. When I used it to look at the Veil Nebula, I was blown away. He and I decided that the 31 was made for the XT-10. Actually, given that back then they were both around $640, perhaps the XT-10 was made for the 31.

The hook had been set, and I realized the value of the 31.  There was no going back to my relatively inexpensive eyepieces, the best of which was a Panoptic 19. The 19 was a darn good eyepiece, but the 31 was something special. I had to have one.

But—how to pay for it? The Sunday advertisements gave the answer: By clipping grocery coupons. I held to a rule that I would only use coupons for things we normally used, not junk or extravagances. And several years later, I had saved up all the money I needed to buy the 31.  In fact, I kept clipping until I had enough for the OIII filter, too.

But wait, there's more to the story.  The person who hooked me on the 31 had sold his TV-102 a couple of years earlier to someone I knew from the annual star party at the Jeffers Petroglyphs. I had seen the 102 at that star party and greatly admired the views it provided. I became the 102's third owner in 2004. And yes, it works with the 31 as if the two were made for each other.

So why do I bring this up now? I've started clipping again, saving for a Canon EOS lens-to-ST-8300M adapter (about $300!).