Zoom Creep

Since I'm currently employed, I can almost afford to support my crack photography habit. I am currently looking for a few new lenses (a super wide angle 10-20ish deal, and a replacement for my standard like a 17-70 2.8) and I'm perusing eBay to check prices. I usually buy my gear new just because I like opening boxes, but that's not really economically wise. Besides, male photographers are SO into their phallic symbols lenses: they use their hot new lens until a newer, hotter one comes out and then dump the perfectly fine old lenses all over the eeeB's. As a female I don't have quite the affinity for gear the way men do, so I can do fine with two lenses. The only reason I'm looking for new ones is because I need a super-wide for shooting shows (18mm just doesn't cut it), and the kit lens is undeinably crappy, and that 3.5-5.6 just doesn't cut it for my shallow depth-of-field desires.

In my eBay search I found a new word invented by the Photography Man (you know, The Man--damn the man !) to describe what happens to zoom lenses whilst left unattended: zoom creep. Some zoom lenses have a wee little lock on them to prevent the part of the lens that extends from moving around while in a bag, backpack, on a camera, etc. One wholesaler, 47th Street Photo, has decided to dub this occurance "zoom creep". You know, when your zoom creeps out.

I think guys are zoom creeps. I've heard so many male photographers drag on and on about what gear they have and what they shot such-and-such a photo wih. I don't care what you shot your damn photos with. If I want to look at them, I will, and more than likely, I'm going to be impressed with the colors over anything else. Guys are such technical fiends that they suck the life out of photography. I've seen more amazing photos taken with a camera phone than with a EOS Mark II 1Ds or a D200 or whatever former satellites people shoot with these days. I feel like I can see the intent and vision of a photographer in a photo, and that is so much more important than your USM stabilisation. I am such a freakin' girl--it's what's inside that counts, not what's sticking off your body.



In other girlish news, I got hot new Jack Purcell's the other day. Chuck Taylor played basketball. Jack Purcell played badminton. Can you guess which shoe my Converse allegiance is with ?