Poll: Lens or Mac?

[pRICE cUBE]

A year ago I bought a Nikon 400mm 2.8 VR over a Mac. I am at the same crossroads again. Keeping in mind I have a Mac Pro 1,1, 2.7gh Mini, and a quad 2.5ghz 17" MBP. A MP or 4GHZ iMac would be great for these monster files from my D800 camera.

[eustacetilley]

My response seems to have been lost in the Ether; it Previewed just fine. So I'll try to reconstruct it:

What is the purpose? For Long-Term Residual Value, a Lens wins hands-down, as long as it is a quality lens. Perkin-Emer Solid Cats can only increase in value.
But if this involves Income Flow, what is the best choice? It's a toss-up. Both can be profitable, as long as wielded by an assured hand.

Leaving Economics out of it, which has the most Intrinsic Quality? Which feels most comfortable at hand? Which pulls the Chicks?

Assuming ~$3K to spend, I would look into a ratty yet plausible MG Midget.
Chicks dig Midgets.

¬Eustace

[pRICE cUBE]

The previous lens was a work necessity. This other lens would be more for the enjoyment of photography without haling around a 9 lb. lens.

[eustacetilley]

pRICE cUBE wrote:
The previous lens was a work necessity. This other lens would be more for the enjoyment of photography without haling around a 9 lb. lens.

Thank you.
I'm pretty good in the Long Lens category, but I could really use a fast Wide-Angle.
The Quality ones aren't cheap. But they aren't in the Mac Pro pRICE category either.

Geometric Distortions are easy to deal with now, but I can't abide Chromatic Aberration. This is just due to the historically bad designs.
The Perkin-Elmers Cats that I mentioned earlier, at least the good NASA green wrinkle-finish ones, and not the flat black Vivitars, were APO lenses. It wasn't so much color that we were concerned with; we shot B&W. But CA leads to smearing, especially at the peripheries. This could be bad. We wanted precision at the peripheries. (We also used Rodenstock APO Process Lenses. They had a flatter field, but with a loss of one stop in speed. There were times that every Photon counted.)


Bevatron Beam 26 Streamer Chamber. Rodenstock APO 760mm F13 Lens. 8x12 Tri-X film.

You mention not hauling around a 9 pound lens. But Fast, Long, and Light is a specialized field. A field relegated to the Catadioptrics in the past.
But maybe I am drawing conclusions. Maybe you, just for fun, may be looking into Astrophotography, Microphotography, Spectral Analysis, Kerr Cells, or something even more exotic.
It is easy to blow ~$3K on just a good Evaporated Nickel Diffraction Grating.

(I'm just having some fun, this early Friday morning. No offense intended.)

My Best to You, pRICE cUBE.

¬Eustace

[Speedy]

Get a Mac. That way we'll know Apple sold at least one.

[vision63]

If I have a 9 pound lens, it may be tedious to haul it around, but that means I "do" have the necessary lens to capture the kinds of things I'm trying shoot.

It's also about which is the coolest box to open (it so shiny!).

[space-time]

which item will allow you to make more money faster so that you canget the othe item?

[3d]

What's the lens?
Quality high-end glass holds their value even better than Macs.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

If you buy a lens, is the manufacturer expected to abandon OS updates for it in a few years?

[wowzer]

Get both, a Tamron 150-600 and a mac.