We all love gear. Even those who say they don't love gear, love gear. But my desire to create the unique has lead me to make some questionable purchases. How about you?
I recently wrote an article about a lens I could never bring myself to sell, and it sparked a lively debate. This got me thinking about the purchases I think have worked out to be the best investments. The Canon 135mm f/2 L mentioned in that article is certainly one. My Sony a7 III is arguably a close second. In all honesty, the rest blend together and I become too bored to think of a third. So, I started asking a more entertaining question: what are the worst purchases I've ever made?
It isn't easy for me to pick one. I've been stung a few times by mistakes of my own doing. However, one stands out for me. It was a vintage Russian 300mm prime lens I found in an antique store. It was beautiful. The whole thing was made of metal and weighed a ton, it had no fungus or clouding inside the glass, and it had almost no scuffs on the barrel what so ever. It was a little pricey and I couldn't find much online about it, and none were for sale. That might put some people off (wisely), but I heard the word "rare" whispered by an ethereal voice and parted with more cash than I should have for something I couldn't identify. Its mount was pretty standard and so getting an adapter to place it on my Canon 6D at the time was straightforward. Once it arrived, it fitted to my DSLR with a satisfying click and I was ready.
I gathered my things and with all due pomp and ceremony, I didn't take a photo until I had reached a location I liked during a fiery sunset. In a prophetic turn of fortune, there was no wildlife anywhere to be seen and my subjects were limited. Undeterred I started taking pictures of leaves and anything near me. Once I loaded the images in to Lightroom, I quickly realized the images were soft. Not slight movement soft, they were softer than blowdried kittens in a silk duvet. The bokeh was pretty nice though.
Outside of that there have been innumerous gadgets that have done poorly, not to mention alternative lighting solutions. I once bought some continuous lights off eBay on the recommendation of a friend. With all of them on full blast, despite generating enough heat to melt their way off the continent, they shared the lumen output with a wet safety match. My colleagues have had similar disasters, with Jack Alexander using lights that blew the power in every venue he used them, and Alex Cooke ordering a graphical tablet so large (under the notion that bigger was better) that it rendered itself unusable. You live and learn!
So let's have it. What's the worst purchase you have made as a photographer? Share in the comments below.
Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash
The Nikon 18-200mm. That is the WORST lens i have ever use. The images were ALWAYS super soft and details were mushy. Images were just uuugly. I can understand a lens like that not having a fast aperture but for what they are charging for that hunk of junk it needs to at least be sharp.
Oh by far it's my lens adapters that I should never have purchased. Simple adapters like M42-to-EF are no problem, but the ones with the corrective optics to compensate for the flange focal distance differences are hot garbage. First I tried a Minolta MC/MD-to-EF and the quality was breathtakingly terrible. And not content with being stupid once, but twice, I then proceeded to get an A-to-EF adapter next with predicable results.
Now I have a pair of ~$40/ea pieces of junk sitting in a box in my apartment. The only use they have at this point is as extremely expensive extension tubes after removing the junky glass inside them.
Edelkrone action module. It it as loud as an industrial copy machine.
"My biggest fear? I'm afraid that after I die, my spouse will sell my camera gear for what I told them it was worth".
Heard that one a few years back.
I am happy to say that I haven't truly regretted a purchase in over 10 years, when I bought one of those dumb WB measurement tools as a wedding, portrait, and theater/stage photographer. Talk about a waste of money. Thankfully, that was the last time I ever bought something based on the hype of sales/marketing, or the hype of other photographers who don't know what they're talking about.
My process for gear shopping has evolved to this extremely effective method:
Read all the reviews, and specifically hunt down both good and bad reviews, and earnestly consider the best praises and worst complaints about a product. Do the best/worst aspects even pertain to what I shoot?
Just as importantly, does the reviewer even sound like they know what they're talking about, and do they shoot similar things to what I do?
If a reviewer hated something, did they give alternatives that actually sound preferable to me? Or did they just bash a product and vaguely say that another option is better?
Last but not least, actually TRY the options before buying. This may require a considerable investment in rental fees when shopping for lenses and bodies, or it may require driving quite a ways to the nearest local camera store to try out bags or tripods or other accessories. But it's worth it, if you always know you've bought the right thing for what you shoot.
Takumar 500mm f/4.5. BIGGG, heavy beast. I had bought it from a guy whose wife made him sell it. My wife, in turn, made me sell it. Months later, my buyer's wife made him sell it.
Easy: A Savage collapsible background. I used it once before the metal ring twisted inside the fabric channel of the backdrop causing the thing to open in an unusable shape. I tossed the thing and replaced it with a Westcott X-Drop for the same purpose. The Westcott I am very happy with.
Tutorials.
A cheap battery for my Nikon camera for suggestion of a friend. The battery seems legit until I charged in the hotel and 20 minutes after explode in a marvelous dance of dangerous chemicals. After that I decided to go always for the originals, not matter the price.
Probably my camera wrist strap, worked wonders while you're shooting, but the moment I have to do literally anything else, it just gets horribly in the way. Now with my shoulder strap I can swing my camera out of the way and I'm free to do what I want.
Unfortunately, buying into TriggerTrap. Great product, but the company going under has put a definite end date of usefulness on hardware that is useless without a mobile app. Learnt my lesson, now every time I see things like Miops, or I think another is Pluto, and how many great options they have and things I'd want to use, I look at the $200ish price tag and wonder how long until it too is a useless piece of hardware with no support from a failing company.
In 2007 I had switched from Nikon to Canon and right into pile of poo known as the 1D Mark III sub-mirror autofocus horror. There I was with a very expensive Canon that couldn't focus even on static subjects in bright sunlight. Returned it immediately for a refund and tried another body that seemed to work, but I sent it in for the recall & fix anyway.
Then I switched back to Nikon when the D700 arrived. Owell.
*****
Tamron 45mm f1.8
I wanted so much to love this lens. Its close focus distance and Vibration Compensation would be great for quick detail photos such as wedding rings, flowers, wedding invitation, etc. and still have a normal f1.8 prime for shallow DOF portraits, or general environmental portraits, etc. For me it seemed like the perfect alternative to carrying a 50mm f1.4 and a macro lens (or using extension tubes with my 50mm which is not great).
I used the 45mm f1.8 on my two Nikon D810 bodies. The problems I had happened with both cameras.
I'll begin by saying this lens needed +6 AF microadjustment on both cameras. Fine. I can live with microadjustment. But even with adjustment, the AF was inconsistent - the lens/camera combo would say it was in focus, but it was not. I couldn't RELY on this lens the way I can rely on the Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 or 24mm f1.8 and that's just not acceptable.
And then there was the focus hunting. Four times in the space of two weeks this lens freaked out and for no apparent reason just hunted for focus from infinity to minimum distance, even with a well lit contrasty subject. I had to turn off the camera, remove the lens, replace the lens, and turn the camera back on. In my 25+ years as a photographer I've never experienced a lens doing that. Again, not acceptable.
Returned for a refund.
*****
Worst waste of money ever: advertising on The Knot.
Capture One Styles - I bought them in the sale but they are still overpriced garbage. Horrible, ugly, time consuming and the worst thing I have bought in photography.
For the person who doesn't like his Sony A7R3 at least he can sell it on and recover most of his money.
a $250 portfolio that no one ever sees cuz they just look at my instagram or website lol
My worst purchase as a photographer was buying the Tamron SP AF 70-200 mm f/2.8 Di LD (IF) MACRO lens, Canon mount in 2011.
An autofocus that just couldn't focus correctly, the lens was sent back to Tamron under warranty and returned to me as no problem found, working within specifications.
I sold the lens for about half of what I paid for it, less than 6 months after purchasing it. I've never purchased another Tamron product since.
The Alienbees ABR800 by far. It is a great product if you have a studio but impractical for shooting weddings without an assistant, which is how I was using it.
I used it twice in 2013, then it sat in my closet. Just sold it on eBay for $50 more than I bought ot for, so that's nice.
As for bad products, every time I use my Nikkor 28-70mm f/2.8 AF-S, I'm disappointed with the softness of the images at certain focal lengths and apertures. This thing needs a ridiculous amount of AF fine tuning.
I bought a 3D lens which was half price. I had thought it was some sort of optical view splitter, feeding two images from different viewpoints at the same time, thus taking a 3d image in one shot, or allowing 3d video. Not so, basically its two separate internal shutters and takes sequential photos. No video possible.
I don't think I've used it more than ten times, it's stayed in my spare kit bag for years.
In general all my photo-backpacks. Why can't anyone actually make a good hiking backpack (in the 30L range) which actually just works for me ... still baffles me.
OMG, tons of different camera bags. I've tried so many of them through the years and have never been totally satisfied with any of them. I'm currently using an Ape Case sling bag that's OK I guess. In the military I used a a huge LowePro backpack that carried everything but the kitchen sink. Weighed a ton, but again, it was OK. It held up through 3 deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, so I guess it served it's purpose.
Some softbox purchases I've made were just absolute garbage. A collapsible beauty dish. I hated it, it gave me blood blisters trying to unlock it. And there's a parabolic softbox that has 2 versions. 1 comes without heat-resistant poles. 1 does. I got the ones without. They never even responded to my calls or emails asking to buy the heat-resistant ones.
.
A nikon 50mm 1.4G, so very soft and slow...
Seriously for me,it was the "fstoppers flash disc". Its ok if I'm kicked out :)
This is an easy one. It was a tripod I purchased decades ago when I was just a little dumber than I am now. Can't remember the brand name, but it broke the very first day I used it. From then on I committed to buying only quality equipment. Of course buying a new to the market product can be risky.
I think worst purchase has to be subjective. I do a fair amount of post processing and bought a Wacom tablet to replace my mouse. I think it was a good product but it just wasn't for me.
Several camera bags, sony A7 kit lens. I now just throw my gear in a $20 backpack (I can leave it unattended and no one bats an eye, even though there is several thousand sitting in that school backpack), and I always have primes on my a7's.
My Panono 360... $1500, one paid gig and tons of free work to try to promote business.
Arsenal.