The Swiss Pagoda

The object in the heading image is not a refugee from a Transformers movie. Nor is it  the main mast from a Japanese battleship. It is a European tripod head that is constructed in the grand tradition of trying too hard to go too far.

Those of you who remember the advertisements for large format cameras made in Europe will recognise the principle. Make a piece of mechanics hinge upon itself in 14 different ways and then bend them all on for the publicity shot. Never mind that you only ever move the thing in very small increments in the studio or out in the field - it is a game of advertising excess to compete with other machine shops.

Notwithstanding the above, this is a superb tripod head. It tilts, pans, swivels, and then twirls around for panoramic pictures. It clamps onto Arca mounts...not surprising because it is made by Arca Swiss. It is terrifyingly adjustable for friction and position. First-time users will be lost in a minute and even old hands will spend time over-correcting themselves.

It is possibly the most precise head generally available and would suit everything from a mirrorless to a monorail. Indeed, with a fully-configured monorail large format camera the photographer would not even need to use film or make any exposures - their entire studio time could be devoted to adjusting the movements until their subject died, rusted, or blew away.

More practical landscape workers could eliminate the wretched ball head and substitute this for far more control - it would make sunsets mellower and rocky shores more rocky...

Who Can You Talk To About Photography? Ten Good Ideas...

We all need to talk to someone. In my house they do it when I am in the john - no end of conversations seem to be vital to the other members of the family whilst one is sitting down. The only way I can think of breaking of this habit is to open the door but this involves some loss of dignity...

For photographers, talking to someone is essential. Around your birthday you talk to the family about how you really, really need the new 12-2500mm zoom lens that has just been announced at Photokina and how much better it will make their lives. Sometimes this works.

Of course there are different divisions of photography and it occurred to me that each one has a different form of conversation:

1. Family photographers talk to the family. Initially in soft sweet words and eventually in parade ground tones.

2. Good portrait photographers talk to their subjects. Bad portrait photographers talk to their assistants.

3. Landscape photographers talk to themselves.

4. Food photographers talk to themselves but in different voices. Sometimes the voices talk back.

5. Sports photographers talk to the St. John's Ambulance  attendants.

6. Fashion photographers talk to the models. Slowly, and with little words.

7. Leica photographers talk to the Almighty. Once, in the morning, to give orders for the day.

8. Camera collectors talk to their cameras.

9. Darkroom workers never talk.

10. Photography Art collectors talk to their brokers.

If you wish to add any to this list please pop it onto our comments section or onto the Facebook page attached to this blog.

Uncle Dick

Forget Forgetting - Carry A Spare In The Boot - With Promaster

No end of people need a tripod for the occasional landscape or group shot, but never want to carry their big studio model with them. They sometimes try to get a tiny travel tripod to attach to their camera bag but are horrified when they see the weight and size equation that this creates.

Overseas travel needs this equation to be solved with very small figures - but that means that the price goes up. That is inescapable - and if you add a further requirement of large lenses or camera bodies you need to go even further up the price scale. Eventually it becomes cheaper to just import the landscape rather than buy the tripod that you need to go photograph it...

If you are only going to be in the city, state, or country and plan to drive your car to the shoot, think about having a really cheap and light tripod in the boot of the car. It will be best suited to mirror-less cameras and it will not have carbon fibre or super complicated head but it will be there when you need it. If your wife drops a bag of superphosphate on it you'll only be out 50 bucks.

We've got good, cheap Promaster Vectra Delux tripods in store right now  for $ 50. Flip-lock legs, central rising column, three-way video head and even a little quick-release plate. You can afford it and you might just need it.

Something for the weekend, Sir?

Eight Bars Of Entertainment And Thirty Two Bars Of Music

Those of you who have ever attended a belly dance show know what I mean - particularly if it is traditional, nostalgic, and culturally sensitive. The saving grace for a photographer of these events is the fact that if you missed it the first time, you have three more goes to capture it...

The same might be said for many aspects of photography - I mean about the repetition. I see a number of club contests that set out categories for images. The contestants are pretty good in what they do - they follow the categories and fulfil the set subject criteria - and there is a very high level of technical skill.

There is also a warm nostalgia about some of the images. Not only is the image of the rusted 1937 Ford truck* in the wheat belt paddock evocative of 1937 and the wheatbelt, it is reminiscent of every club competition since 1938, both in and out of the wheat belt.

Some of the subjects are actually the same. Mrs. Ah Wen Chung has served as the wrinkled smoking Chinese woman for club photography since 1957. It has been steady employment for her, and apart from a racking cough, has benefitted her and her family.

We are hoping for a little change in the landscape section in 2016 as the Albany Shire Council has decided to cement up The Gap. If they sell off Wave Rock to the Chinese government we may have to fall back on sunsets and Bluff Knoll. Mind you, hauling a rusted 1937 Ford truck up the top of Bluff Knoll will be a royal pain.

Still, look on the bright side - in November of this year the Albany Shire Tourist Trappers Association will be combining with the Royal Australian Navy, The Not Imperial Any More Japanese Navy, and as many of the local RSL members as can be coaxed out of the bar to commemorate the passing of the ANZAC fleet in 1914. Albany will be Where It's At. What an opportunity for he photographer to capture the scene. Flags flying. Bands playing. Coffee stalls perking. Politicians speaking. Don't worry about missing the speeches - you'll have three more goes...

* The original 1937 Ford has been replaced with a fibreglass replica. Good from the front.

Black Or White - There Or Here - You Choose

We're just about to launch into the Christmas and holiday season and people are thinking about their vacation travel and their holiday snaps. The wise ones are, at any rate - and I am including the readers of this blog in that august group. Indeed - the smartest ones would have been starting to plan about August...

Let us not think about those who will pull a dead compact camera out of laundry cupboard, come down here to ask the technicians to fix if for free and claim that they never, ever had it at the beach - despite the dribble of sand and out of the lens and a starfish stuck on the LCD screen...Their vacation pictures will be fine, as long as they buy postcards.

If you're gearing up to do it right and to make the most of your chances on a domestic or overseas holiday, consider one of the Big Two from Fuji. Big Two? The X-Pro 1 and the X-100s. The black and white cameras in the picture. Please note that white is really silver but it reads better as white - I had my poetic licence renewed.

Okay, what do you get with the X-100s? An APS-C sensor, a lens exactly matched to it - 35mm focal length in the old filmspeak, and you get enough processor power and options in the computer functions to make it perform perfectly. The business of matching that lens to that sensor is really the key to it all. As well, you get a number of options in the way that you see the image - optical or electronic, and a precise framing for close-ups. It has a fill-flash and computer control that leads to confidence in any interior situation - you get a balanced result no matter what the backdrop is doing.

You can switch it to auto and give it it's head or do aperture and shutter speed via good big traditional dials. You can command a MF on the lens ring. Do it old or do it new, but do it.

Want to do it with interchangeable lenses? The X-Pro 1 really is pro. A superb set of Fujinin lenses made for the system all the way from 14mm to 200mm, zooms and macro in there as well. Superbly sharp with MF direct drive for a number of them. More automation and manual than its direct competitors. Excellent Q display to assist with settings. The basis of a thoroughly professional system of optics - a money-earner.

Both of these are in good supply right now and you can get up to speed with what they can do before you fly. Tip: If you're going to be doing closeup urban holidays pick the X-100s. If you're going to Churchill, Manitoba to see the bears, pick the X-pro 1. And the 55-200 lens. And a Mauser. Black bears are one thing but white bears are a whole different deal...

Come In Here And Go Away...with an Olympus Stylus

Vacation season is almost upon us - or you may think of is as holiday season. I suppose the time off is the same but it depends on whether you intend to spend it being holy or vacant.

For those of you who want to be active and artistic I think we have a good camera to help you. Note that I say active - if you are going away somewhere it is always better to go away with as light a burden as possible. The principle is to go to the casino with a dollar in your pocket and come home with a thousand more - those of you who may have experienced the opposite effect are obviously entering and leaving by the wrong door...

But back to the burdens of pleasure - if you are flying you don't want to carry our entire store on your back - you want a camera that you can carry. Equally, you don't want to go to all the trouble to go to Upper Wazutoland and get ill and robbed and not come home with some good photos to reward yourself - you want a competent camera. The Olympus Stylus  XZ-2 is a good bet for both these reasons.

Basic specs include 12 Megapixels, 4 x zoom, an f:1.8 lens that will wide out to the equivalent of 28mm and full HD video. In addition you get the special programs that Olympus champion - diorama, film, soft focus, and grainy film amongst others. My favourite, because it closely equates to my own vision of life - is the Key Line Effect.

You get a guided panorama mode that makes your stitching perfect.

The layout of the camera also favours using it on a tripod ( Cullmann, Promaster, or Three Legged Thing come to mind...)with the LCD screen acting as a waist-level finder. I should use a black focussing cloth or a Hoodman screen shield to make this easier in bright light. If you switch the art filter to soft sepia you can make historic pictures even when there is no history. Like some of our newer suburbs - the civic architecture that has tilted up on the fringes of civilisation is truly worthy of soft sepia. At night. In a rain storm.

Now, cynicism aside, the XZ-2 is incorporating a lot of the processing power that Olympus pack into their mirror-less cameras, but in a compact form. Not that the mirror-less ones are monsters, but this camera is all in one. You can add a useful accessory if you wish - the  electronic viewfinder slots into the data bus at the top.

The thing that impresses me is the easy access for the programs - I favour manual myself, but that is because I like making my own mistakes and blaming others. Hey, it works at home...

If you don't want quite as big an Olympus there are others here that are equally good for travel - but someone will come and buy this one and make absolutely wonderful pictures.

Travel hint: Cullmann Magic Monopod. Steady pictures, steady video, useful baton for South American streets.

A Camera For Plain Pictures And Plain Dealing

Welcome, Friend. How may I help thee?

You wish to take photographs of thy family, or thy farm animals? Of the Meeting House on Sunday? And you wish to do it decently, soberly, and in plain clothes? Of course.

Here is the camera for thee. The Ricoh GR. It has one lens only and that lens sees the world at the equivalent of a 28mm focal length. Thee can take pictures inside thy house by lantern as well - it has an aperture of 2.8.

So that there is no chance of dishonesty, the camera is fitted with an electronic level - your pictures will be level. They can also be made square if that is thy wish.

You may elect to shoot them in a number of jpeg sizes. Modesty being a virtue, many of the elect will elect to switch it to small and turn off the colour setting. If you wish to make a large picture, remember that the RAW setting and the 16 Megapixel APS-C sensor will permit good results up to A3+.

If you wish to make motion pictures to show the action of your favourite buggy horse, there is a full HD 1920 x 1080 video. You will need a fast SD XC I card to do this.

The appearance of the camera is modest and sober - no flashy chrome or colours to dominate others.

If you wish to examine the world in detail, it will focus as close as 10 centimetres.

We have a number of them for sale and we will deal plainly and fairly with thee - as will the Ricoh Corporation, who warrant the camera for a year.

It's Just 3 Millimetres...

This is a post dedicated to the mum and dad photographers - the ones who do the family snaps and the holiday pictures and the wedding groups - after the pro has posed the bridal party. The people who take pictures because they want to see what is in the pictures - as opposed to the people who take pictures because they want to take pictures...

Not that we are knocking the latter - where would we be if hordes of us hadn't gone out on every Saturday afternoon and failed to find out where the pictures are...didn't stop us from getting new equipment and neither should it stop you.

But back to the modest family photographers. More often than not they like to take landscape pictures, and pictures inside the school assembly hall, and family groups. The one thing they need more than anything is a wider view of the world - and preferably one that is neither distorted, not expensive, nor hard to get. These are not customers for the widest fish-eye or the exotic rectilinear that costs as much as a TV set. These are the customers for the kit lens.

Canon makes two good options for Mum and Dad - the EF-S 18-55 f:3.5-5,6 IS II and the EF-S 15-85 f:3.5-5.6 IS USM. The first is kitted with a number of the entry-level bodies and the second comes out with the 7D. Of course they can be put on any small-frame EOS Canon, just as you please.

The real eye-opener is when you compare their viewpoints - as you'll see in the images. That 3 mm difference in the wide-angle viewpoint makes a world of difference in what you see. Of course there is a difference in the longer end - 85 mm vs 55 mm but I'll bet in most family circumstances that wide 3 mm will be more useful than the long 30 mm.

Of course there is a cost - greater weight and higher price - but this can be spread out over a long time - Canon lenses keep their value - and it would be great to see more pictures making more mums and dads happy.

Hard Cases

We have a small pile of ex-rental hard cases near the front counter. You might need new foam inside but they're only $ 25 each. Makes a good big school lunch box...

Cubists Of The World - Unite! You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Ballheads!

At long last the Arca Swiss Cube has arrived and we can throw away our ancient three-way heads that have been sitting on the studio tripod since Fox Talbot was a kitten. This device has been advertised on our window for months...with never a sniff of the real thing. Well, the real thing is here and it is wonderful.

Please note that I am not restricting the sales pitch to studio shooters; landscapists, architectural photographers, and panoramicists will also benefit from this piece of gear. It is simply the most precise way to orientate a still camera on the top of a tripod that I have seen.

I use a Gitzo tripod in the studio - it has either a Linhof pan and tilt mounting or a Gitzo 3-way head on the top, but neither of these alternatives come close to the Arca Swiss.

The Cube has precise rack control of two axes, and a positive lock mechanism for tilt. It has variable pressure for the knob controls, so that you can match the effort needed to move the camera with the weight of it. It has a precise panorama turntable at the top of the totem pole...so you can level everything before you spin around in the pano shot.

It is well-built. The Swiss are like that. Their cheese may have holes in it but their camera gear is pretty solid!

Switzerland - Head Of The Valley

Some people chose the best because they actually need it and some choose the best because they have a big sack of money. Most times it ain't the same person...

If you fit either class, consider the Arca Swiss head on this blog. It would be rotten to do sport with and rotten to do portraits with...but it is the world's best for panoramas. If you are into horizontal stitching and can determine your camera/lens nodal point, you can make this head spin on the vertical axis with a precision that will astound you.

It copes with the tripod being on uneven ground by the simple expedient of keeping the ball under the tyrntable. Do what you like with the legs under it, once you level the camera and check it with a spirit level you can spin round for a perfect horizon. Your stitching program will cope much better.

That is an Arca-Swiss mount on the top, of course, so it will match lots of the ...ahem... oriental copycat manufacturer's tripod plates. Let them fight it out amongst themselves in the mountains...

Ivory And Ebony

The advance of digital photography has seen some remarkable trends - none more so than the photograph that slows a waterfall to a mist - or levels a moving sea. Or removes all the people from a busy city street. We mean the interposition of a very dark neutral density filter into the light path which permits a very slow shutter speed.

The name that is on everyone's lips is Big Stopper - it is the catchy tag for the Lee company's 100mm x 100mm resin filter. It fits into their standard holders and drops 10 stops of light. I wish I had invented the name Big Stopper - it is the sort of thing that you can bandy about at a camera club meeting and sound really cool.

Oh, would that you could go into a shop and buy one. Like into our shop, for instance. Because of their great popularity and the drought that has been affecting the English filter fields...we never seem to have enough of them delivered to satisfy the clubmen. Please do not think that I am criticising English manufacturing practice - I am sure that if you wanted a Quad amplifier or a Manton shotgun you could find them at any corner store...

But for whatever reason, the Lee filters are hard to get. We have found another good answer for the landscape photographer. B+W make 1000x filters in screw-in sizes that will do the same job as the Big Stopper. Kenko make an ND 400 that gives you 9 stops of darkening. And Promaster make a wonderful variable neutral density filter that looks as though it would do 1 to 10 stops. To prove it to myself I put one over a light box at the two extremities of adjustment - have a look at how dark it gets.

The video people can also use this sort of a variable filter to do fade-outs at the end of video shots.

I should purchase one in the largest size lens that I use, then adapt it to smaller lenses with simple step-dow rings. The whole deal would be cheaper than Lee, but don't let that influence you.

Morning Has Broken

Those of you skilled in photo-interpretation may be interested in the image above. It was taken by a PRU Spitfire of 103 Sqdn this morning at 0850 hours at a height of 40 cm above the counter at 230 Stirlng Street, Perth.

The girls in the unit have identified the shrouded object  and feel that it might be one of the new Fuji X100s cameras. These are rare - they are generally only sighted in the hands of lucky enthusiasts and professionals who clutch them tightly and run away laughing.

We note that B&H in New York do not have them in stock...and if they did would extract something like 1500+ Australia dollars to get it to the customer here in Perth in a week. Makes the $ 1328 price here at Camera Electronic for something that you can take home this morning look pretty attractive...

The camera has won a number of awards and plaudits - as well it might with the dedicated new sensor and superb operation. The D P Review site has just published the complete report on it and given it an extremely high rating. This is not surprising considering the 70-some tweaks and improvements that have been incorporated into it. This is possibly the reason that the New York dealer is out of stock.

Still, here's one for sale fresh in its wrapping and ready to go right now. How long will it be here? We're open to 5:30 today....

Paddington Bear's Camera Bag

 

Those of you with children - or who were children - will remember Paddington Bear, particularly when he dressed in his yellow mackintosh and sou'wester hat. That is the image that came to mind when I saw the new Dryzone bags and it will take some time to eradicate it.

In any case this is the second offering in the new Dryzone series. smaller than the backpack, but the same form of roll-over watertight seal. It has a unique plastic hook latch that straps over the top of the case when closed to evenly distribute weight - it would be a good bag for heavy bodies and lenses.

We joked about the wet places where you could need this - but we neglected to mention that wet needn't necessarily be dank. There are plenty of snowy landscapes that need cameras and you need water protection there too. If you are going to break your leg in Thredbo this year, consider doing it with this Lowepro case. Also thoroughly recommended for Alaska and Churchill, Manitoba.

 

Just don't expect to sneak up on your subject while carrying it - unless it is through a field of buttercups...

A Dry Camera Is A Happy Camera

For years the Lowepro people have been making a line of their bags with the model name " Dryzone ". These are intended for use in areas that have running water - running over the photographer, that is. Tasmania, New Guinea, The East Indies, tropical Queensland...rain forests, waterfalls, and leaky roofs.

The previous design in this series relied upon some pretty fierce zippers with rubber seals to exclude water - the things were difficult to operate due to the force required to separate the rubber section. The new design uses the lunch parcel concept - you roll and fold the top of the sealed plastic bag to keep it dry. It seems complex, but it is really a lot easier to work.

Do they work? Yes. One of our clients upended his canoe with one of the Dryzone bags aboard and then used it as a float to get to shore. The camera gear was fine. Those of you who remember Tom Hanks in " Joe And The Volcano " will recognise the similarity.

Lowepro - don't leave shore without it...

The Dawn Of Beauty

Landscape photographers are romantics. They must be - they go a thousand kilometres to camp overnight in freezing bush so that they can get up at 3:30AM and hike through bush to a beachfront. Then they haul 500 Kg of equipments over wet rocks and stand there shivering while they are waiting for he sun to rise. They have $ 8200 sitting on a tripod in front of them on the slippery rocks and are waiting only an incautious moment to tip it into the sea.

Then they drive a thousand kilometres back home and spend week of nights in a dark room trying the HDR the result. This seems clear evidence of either romance or madness.

One of the symptoms of this madn... I mean one of the useful and perfectly normal items that every landscape photographer needs is the circular polariser filter. See the opening image for a typical polariser in operation.

The polariser makes blue skies bluer, green seas greener, and white bride's dresses whiter. Foliage loses the blue cast that Western Australian skies put into it and the colours seem much richer. They can also be used to see through water surfaces and glass shop windows to reveal the goods within. It makes everything look like it is straight from the pages of ARIZONA HIGHWAYS.

Good? Yes. Bad? Yes. WHAT?

Well, consider - if you want to see bluer skies and greener seas and fluffier clouds, all very well - you can produce this effect and good luck to you. It is charming but fraudulent. If you wish to represent what your eye actually sees in a scene, consider that your eye is seeing the light scatter anyway - remove it and you are interpreting rather than representing.

Morals aside, if you want to get the full effect of the polariser remember that it works most effectively at 90º from the sun. If you try to put one onto a lens that has too wide an angle of view it will work in one portion of the scene differently from another portion. You may be better in these cases to seek your colour enhancement by computer means further down the track.

Please note that the polariser filter and polarising sheets may be a real boon in art copy and scientific work - letting us see what the light scatter spoils. We are seeking science, not art. And generally don't have to stand on wet rocks to get it.

Vast Vistas With Half Vast Lenses

The season is nearly upon us. Winter is about to hit with all the fury it can manage - lashing gales, scudding clouds, massive gas bills. Now is the time to head on out to the coast or the forest or the desert with your digital camera and make yourself thoroughly miserable.*

Ahem, I'll amend that. Think of all those wonderful landscapes throughout Western Australia that are just waiting for your artistic vision...And what better way to express it than through a wide-angle lens. Here are four of the best.

Zeiss 21 Distagon, Nikon 20 Nikkor, Canon 20 EF, and Leica 18 Super Elmar-M. Wise photographers will pick the one that suits their camera body - and those that want to use the Zeiss can obtain a variant to fit either Canon or Nikon.

They are not zoom lenses - if you want to change the angle of view you walk further forward or further back. Because they are not zoom lenses the manufacturers have been able to optimise their resolution and reduce the various distortions that lenses are subject exhibit to the absolute minimum. These are the lenses for the big print.

As they are not zoom lenses, they do not carry extra elements and you do not carry extra weight. If you are capturing landscapes you need to go where the landscapes are, and this means stalking them through the bush. And up hills, and over rocks. Welcome the compact size and light weight.

They
will all take filter systems in front of them so you can mount ND grads, polarisers, star filters, diffusers, and heart-shaped masks for that special landscape - all at once. Don't laugh - eventually someone will, and if they are good at selling the idea, will get an arts grant for it. I refuse to accept responsibility for this suggestion...

Can you use them in a studio? Yes you can - I use a 20 Nikkor for toy car shots. Can you use them for architecture and interiors? Yes you can, and quite a few of the pros do.

Big crowd shots? Wedding parties? School groups? Custom street cars? Yep.

Put down that zoom and come in and try one of them - you cannot fail to be impressed.

* I'll be by the fire with the plate of muffins and the copy of "Handley Cross". Off you go.

New Packaging For A Favourite Product

Here's the new product packaging that came in this week for the Lee Big Stopper filter.

The Big Stopper is Lee's way of slowing the world down - 10 stops of light reduction with no annoying colour shifts. You can smooth out skies, make waterfall misty, and put a soft fog effect on the restless sea.

You can photograph city streets full of busy travellers and have most of them disappear - of course you can do that by broadcasting live from Parliament, but we're talking art, not angst.

This new packaging is fun - a neat tin box with internal padding to protect the filter. I have no idea why they changed it from the  previous padded pouch, but it makes a nice change on the shelves.

Note: Big Stoppers sell like hot cakes and are less fattening. If you want one get it now before we sell out again.

The Little Guys Get To Play Too - With Lee Filters

We've been selling Lee filters for years to professional and advanced enthusiast photographers. They value them for the clarity of the filter - no colour casts - and for the sturdiness of the holder system. They can get some filters that are unique. And they can adapt them to some very strange lenses...albeit in some very strange ways.

Okay - up to now I have only known about their big range - lo and behold we now have some of their Seven Five product in store. It seems to be a miniaturised version of the larger filter holder and of the graduated neutral density filters.

The principle of the thing is the same - a dedicated adaptor ring for the front of your lens, a holder clamped onto it, and the neutral density filter sliding up and down in the holder. But in the new small size, it can go onto mirrorless and micro 4/3 cameras.

The astute photo enthusiasts will realise that this might free them from having to take a large DSLR on a long trek into the bush for a landscape photo just to make use of an ND grad system. Now they can take their Panasonic, Olympus, Nikon, Canon, or Fuji and pack it into a very much smaller space.

Those who still wish to take larger gear are recommended to contemplate a 4 x 5 monorail outfit with full compendium up the side of Bluff Knoll in a rainstorm...

Note from the pack shots that there is a starter kit with one ND grad and also a three pack of different strength filters. They are all small enough so as to justify carrying the lot on your next venture - local or overseas.

Who The Heck Would Buy One Of Those?...Zeiss

Hey, look over here, Fred! There's a bunch of lenses that don't have any autofocus. And they don't have any automatic stabiliser switch. And they don't have a zoom. And they don't even have a rubber ring around the lens. Who the heck would buy one of these?

Well, professional architectural photographers for one. Professional landscape photographers for another. People who carefully construct images - or carefully observe them - and who can evaluate the focus before they press the button. Slow workers.

Then there are the photographers who are making images for fussy clients - clients who demand the utmost in resolution for their advertising images. Clients who demand the absolute minimum of chromatic aberration in the product.

People who shoot Nikon, or Canon, or Leica , or....Zeiss Ikon cameras. Note that the last named are becoming rare and are film cameras.

Sometimes Zeiss lenses are used by careless and forgetful clients. NASA left a number of their Zeiss lenses on the moon back in the last century and this was taxpayer's money too...

Well, apart from governmental agencies, scientific workers, and advanced enthusiasts, I guess that's all. Can we sell you a lens, Fred?