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Your most worthless photo gear purchase was what?
Was cleaning out closet and stumbled over two things I've never used. Both were monopods, and one is an expensive RRS branded one with one of their ball heads on it. Never used either of them. Bad GAS attack maybe, but I thought one "never used" monopod would have stopped me from buying another one. Curious if others here bought something they rarely or never have used and just sitting around? Aug 29 20 05:09 pm Link GRMACK wrote: Lots, like you mention the big ball head for the tripod. Flash reflectors. Monopod that I never used. Stacks of filters and caps. Aug 29 20 07:44 pm Link Collapsible reflectors - a couple of them, and a portable backdrop. Never used them, but they seemed like a good idea at the time :-) Aug 29 20 11:02 pm Link If I give it much thought the list could get long but: collapsible reflectors, oversized reflectors, monopods, LED panel lights, camera bags, custom painted backdrops, filter sets, small Pelican case, battery cases, camera raincoat, Gary Fong anything, a couple of tripod heads, a number of soft boxes until I found the right one, a Nikon Z6 instead of going right to a Z7, and that's just off the top of my head. Aug 30 20 12:47 pm Link Very minor purchases like used step-up / step-down rings and filters. In the context of having spent part of the last 30 years buying and selling cameras and photography equipment, a drop in the bucket. I haven't always made money but I've rarely lost much and some flips have gone very well. A couple of years ago I bought some Canon stuff from the original owner who wanted to switch to Sony. He'd bought everything new. There was a Canon 20d with 3 batteries and and a charger, a 70-200 f4L with caps, hood and bag, a 17-40 f4L with caps and bag, a Tamron 90 2.8 Macro with caps and bag, all in pristine condition - well cared for. $350 cash, craigslist deal. I sold the 20d for $60 and the 70-200 for $300. So I made $10 and have a free 17-40 and Tamron 90mm macro. That's how I roll. Aug 30 20 06:40 pm Link camera lens filters Aug 30 20 09:25 pm Link UV filters for the lenses! Have a stack now that just sit and collect dust. Sep 05 20 09:57 am Link A tripod. Not allowed in sports venues, but monopods are. In beauty shoots indoors or out, I mostly shoot handheld. Sep 05 20 12:53 pm Link Too many to list them all. But one really stands out- Gary Fong LIghtsphere. Sep 05 20 03:19 pm Link The one thing I've sold because it was a mistake for me to buy was the SB600 speed light I bought with my D90, way back when. Turned out that I really needed a SB700, which I still have and use. I got the 'free' battery grip with my D500, never used it, ought to sell it. Getting the 40mm Nikon DX micro seemed like a good idea at the time. The jury is still out on the various tripod & monopod bits I've bought. Either I won't ever need them, or there will be that one time when I need them bad. Sep 05 20 07:25 pm Link i have some stupid mount thing thats supposed to stabilize your handheld camera while shooting video. never used it, ...never really even used my camera for video either. Sep 05 20 09:28 pm Link Paolo D Photography wrote: Oh yeah, i forgot about those. I have two of those. They are the cheap ones, not the $1,000 ones. They are piece of crap, they actually make the video worst. Sep 05 20 10:38 pm Link I'll add some Quantum Trio flash with their Copilot flash transmitter too. Paid maybe $1,500 for the setup along with the larger focused dish and tube extender. Complete junk. Thing never has worked right. Their Copilot transmitter is hit or miss on the flash firing. First time a miss, then it decides to work second shot onward. The TTL never seemed to work well either so they opted to add QTTL. Lots of dials with little info on them. White lettering has worn off too. By design, the larger dish covers the sensor so exposure must be in manual. Today I dug it out and charged the battery. Then I found the cheap plastic case on the flash head has cracked 1/8" wide under the head of the flash. CA gluing time. I suspect the cam wheel that locks the dish spreads the plastic housing leading to the crack. I think Quantum USA laid off all their workers in 2012 and sold off to PromarkBrands who carry a lot of (nearly) extinct lighting brands (Norman, Smith-Victor, Speedotron, Etc.). They still fix a lot of the stuff at a very high price. They occasionally send me repair discount emails. They used to offer free firmware updates to address the myriad of issues but they took it off their website so you have to send it in and pay to get an firmware update now. I should have bought the Godox Wistro AD-360 back then, but I thought the USA made Quantum would be better (It isn't.). The Godox Wisto AD-360 has been superseded by the AD-360 II which will work with most of the camera brands via the proper transmitter. Cost maybe a third of the Quantum too. Maybe it was good enough back in 2012. Sep 06 20 07:45 am Link Profoto Acute ringlight. $650 and I used it twice for personal projects. I could have rented it both times and saved >$500. I guess I could sell it. Sep 07 20 07:30 am Link Sablesword wrote: Been there done that. I still have it in case I need it for that one time. Sep 07 20 08:31 am Link I think it would have to be the "kit" with my camera. I knew better, but for some reason I thought it would be a good idea since it was the same price. Well it was good because a couple of the items i gave away. The battery grip was cheap knock off and I was not going to put that on a new expensive camera. At least, this did not cost any money. Sep 09 20 10:13 am Link New studio lighting gear as opposed to used. Sep 27 20 01:10 pm Link Lots of stuff that is too specific to be useful and was never needed. For example: a huge backpack suitable for a hike up Mount Everest, but 99% of my gigs are accessible with a wheeled cart. Sep 28 20 08:02 am Link Hate to admit but most recent was a barely used 5D Mark II from a really sweet girl on fb with 188,000 clicks. Sep 28 20 09:41 am Link A WD My Passport ...Now useless, and no options to recover the photos.... Sep 28 20 02:21 pm Link Light meter. Triggers the Pocket Wizards I no longer own. Sep 28 20 08:15 pm Link Mine was a very nice gimbal rig for a video shoot that never happened. Sits in the case in pristine condition....I should sell that thing, Sep 30 20 08:20 am Link One of those wrap around bounce panels. I bought one to use with a Metz hammerhead flash unit and all it was good for was blinding everyone in a five mile radius of the blast zone. The best thing I ever bought was a nikon ITTL flash gun, after I gave up being old school, and I can still remember how miraculous it felt when I got perfect exposure time after time without having to do anything. Oct 02 20 01:51 pm Link Chuckarelei wrote: LOL...those are actually mandatory for all our photographers! LOL A total game changer for event photography. Oct 02 20 03:35 pm Link Monopod. I occasionally use a tripod, but the monopod has never left the junk closet. Oct 07 20 02:50 pm Link My most worthless? A Pentax Program Plus that I bought in 1984. I'd used the Pentax K1000 in high school and loved it. I assumed that I'd also like the Program Plus. I was so wrong. It sucked. After owning it for 2 or 3 months I invested in a Nikon F3 and never looked back. I used that F3, and eventually another like it, for 20 years till switching to digital in 2005. I do know that my best purchase was when I finally, after many many years, bit the bullet and switched to the Profoto lighting system two and a half years ago. It was a hard pill to swallow but now that I've done it? I'll never look back. Oct 13 20 02:57 pm Link Remote for Canon T7I that came as part of the bundle. It just wouldn't work and I use my phone instead, which also works on my 6D. Oct 26 20 05:52 pm Link Sablesword wrote: I hear you on that one. Oct 27 20 09:05 am Link Cheap 7 dollar Linco speed-light stand adapters come to mind. I simultaneously used two of them that stuck themselves permanently. I broke one SB-24 shoe trying to forcefully remove it and a trigger on another has accepted its fate of being permanently mounted to a cheap Linco stand mount. Linco is a swear word around these parts Oct 27 20 05:16 pm Link Oh, a big continuous light setup that sits in a closet mostly forgotten about. A modifier that can create patterns, I used a few times, not worth the money I spent on it. Nov 03 20 06:07 pm Link With the ubiquity of cell phones, selfies, social mediacrity and ("Isolation")? Camera; lighting; reflectors; computer; software; light meters; stands; backdrop; batteries; backups; flashes; tripod; makeup; wardrobe; sandbags; lenses; insurance; cases; cleaners... Nov 04 20 06:09 am Link Worthless photo gear? A poor imagination and lack of preparation. Less focus on gear and more focus on " The Work " Nov 04 20 06:54 pm Link Storytelling-Images wrote: Personally, I find that UV filters for various lenses are never a 'bad buy' (provided one doesn't simply buy the 'cheap and nasty' economical ones) - they are always useful for protecting the front element of a lens which is going to be much more expensive to replace (or repair if that's economical in the first place) than spending a few dollars on these UV filters. Nov 07 20 07:37 am Link Vector One Photography wrote: Somehow I knew I would run into these items on this list. To make matters worst, I had the one that did not collapse, so it iwas like carrying Tupperware. I guess I could say that it makes an interesting candy dish on my desk now. Nov 11 20 09:52 am Link Bluestill Photography wrote: haha! Nov 11 20 10:11 am Link ROUA IMAGES wrote: I can't argue with this... Nov 12 20 05:04 am Link Other than a couple lenses, and brackets not used...Surprisingly, a flashpoint Li-ion off camera flash with R1 controller. Never used for 3 yrs, But with the pandemic and needing new places to shoot, now very valuable. So, another newer version R2 was bought, backwards compatible with device Nov 14 20 10:58 pm Link I bought a Tamron 500mm F8 Mirror lens when I first started photography. It's fun at first with some nice ring bokeh, but with fix aperture it has very limited use. I soon got bored of it. Nov 20 20 02:18 pm Link Not really worthless but I never use them. Barn doors for my strobes. I always wind up using something else like fabricating a gobo instead. Nov 21 20 07:47 am Link mine was 4 sets of led strobelights when they first came out and not cheap either. prob good for video but not for photography unless you use it for really low light scenes. They marketed it for photography. Dec 04 20 01:23 am Link |
