Immediate Pleasure, Part One

For some reason I want to buy a DSLR camera. 

I started out with SLR’s years and years ago with a Yashica, focus and set the shutter speed and aperture manually. 

I moved to a Canon AE 1 Program.  Same deal, though it would let you shoot with aperture or shutter speed priority.  Choose one and it would give you the best available other, given the available light, if that makes sense.

That got stolen and I bought a Canon EOS 630.  Auto focus with more auto program features, which I mostly ignored, having learned cameras manually.

Then I got a high end Canon point and shoot.

Then my phone became my camera.

One of the downsides to what I do for a living is that it never ends.  Even when you get a good result for a client, you move on to the next thing on the calendar.  I make my living playing serial table stakes poker that lasts for months and years.

One of the reasons I like my blog is that there is a start and a finish to each post that aren’t too far away from each other.  I get an idea, type a bit and either say, or don’t quite say, what I thought about.  Maybe half the time, I think I’ve written a little piece of art.  Okay, less than half.

I’ve always had some sort of hobby that has a shorter effort/reward cycle. 

I used to play pool until I got to the point that I was as good as I was going to get, unless I started playing hours a day.  But I loved the art of pool.  So many variables on each shot, each shot leading, if you thought it out to the next then the next, until you got to the nine or the eight, depending on the game.  Either game, if you thought it through and executed, pleasure quickly.

Back in the last decade of the last century I took up photography seriously.  Lots of variables, play them right and you get a thing of beauty, fairly quickly for the times.

Digital has speeded up the results to “now,” subject to the time you play with the data with software.

But the enjoyment disappeared with the point and shoot and the phone.  I “see” a lot of stuff that I can’t reproduce.  The 630 and the point and shoot still work; but, each have a flaw.  The 630 has film, the point and shoot lacks a base quality for what I’ll, hubistrically, if that’s a word, call art (Word says it isn’t a word).

So, I’m thinking I need a platform that will let me produce what I “see” again.  The next post will chronicle my search, driven by another part of my personality – “damn that’s expensive.”  But, I think I’ve found a way.  I found out this morning that one of my lenses, that I bought for about $150, sells for over $1,000 today.