What is KEH smoking?

This is a screenshot from today in which Amazon is charging $299 for an Olympus E-PL6. with 14-42 lens That sounds a pretty good deal to be honest but does not seem to be unusually cheap.
 I just added (today) the cost of a ratty old Olympus E-PL5 of unknown origin and an equally ratty old 14-42 lens of unknown origin. This is last year's version of the kit Amazon is selling new for $299. KEH wants - wait for it - $305. That's $6 more than a new model but for something that has been used, abused and probably shoved up a Orc's backside.

Seriously, what is KEH smoking? It must be truly mind-blowingly hallucinigenic for them to want more than the new price for something secondhand and legacy technology. The question is whether KEH is really in the business of selling cameras or whether they're running a hobby website.

As many of my readers know, money is extremely tight on this end of the blogsphere. So much so that I really shouldn't be considering buying anything - even food. Having said that, despite the fact I've been unable to pay any income tax this year (due to low income) or get the mandatory health insurance, I might be receiving a small tax refund. That would probably cover a few things like dental care, a trip to the optician or maybe a secondhand mirrorless camera. I might even be able to sell off the remains of my DSLR system too though I detest the horrendous waste of money it represents. Though at one time I had money, I was also in a very dark period in my life. Sadly, the Canon kit is inexorably linked to that dark period. Hence I have been looking at other cameras to replace it.

I had been considering secondhand until I saw KEH prices. At that rate, I might as well save money by buying new. At least with a new camera, I get a year's warranty and I know nothing bad has happened to it. I know it hasn't been used by an ebola patient or by a nuclear reactor worker, been stolen, fallen from 42,000 feet or been otherwise abused.

Why it's a silly idea to buy a new camera

As my regular readers will know I possess a Canon XT. I've had it since it was new for which I paid probably $800 - $1000. Today I looked at the secondhand market and eBay seems to be selling plenty XTs for $45 or frequently less. Considering I have taken less than 10,000 photos using my camera over the past 10 years, it works out as really rotten value. In 10 years, had I used film, I would have taken less photos and been more mindful of the cost of the photo. That's not hard to do either. I haven't taken any photos for several months with my XT. I've taken a lot of photos with my phone though.

Checking my phone, I've taken 42 photos this month so far and that's a low number. I expect when I work on my bus project tomorrow I'll take a further dozen photos. My phone is something I need anyway and the camera on it was free. Currently phone cameras are way better value than DSLRs.

Looking at the resale value of cameras - you will certainly want to sell your camera at some point in order to take advantage of later developments - they're a huge money pit. Back in film days when cameras didn't change much from decade to decade they retained their value. That meant it was worth buying a camera because it could be reliably sold for about 75% of what it cost. Now because cameras and lenses are overproduced and oversold, the resale value is negligible. $1,000 for something that'll be worthless in a few short years is a pointless waste of money. Better to stick with a cameraphone and just agree that it won't be great for the more specialised photographic disciplines.

Secondhand, it's well worth buying a camera. The technology won't be the latest but if you can live with that, it could well be worthwhile. I'd like to take night sky photos but am stuck. I either have to spend $300-$400 on the cheapest suitable lens, $300-$400 on a camera with an ISO high enough to use my existing lenses or $175 on a secondhand camera and lens from one of the newer mirrorless systems. It looks obvious - sell the existing stuff and go for the mirrorless solution. There's a problem though - the mirrorless cameras have slightly less dynamic range.

I can honestly say that the way Canon has overproduced and oversold their cameras and lenses is exceptionlly shortsighted and has quite probably ruined the market. I know for sure that if the rate of release had been a lot slower - say one camera every 5 years instead of every 18 months and cameras with real differences rather than notional differences then the bottom would not have fallen out of the used camera market. What difference is there between the XT and the XTi? Simple - 2 megapixels. That is so negligible it's not worth mentioning. What is the difference between 8 megapixels and 16 megapixels? Not much - the extra 8 sounds phenomenal but in actuality means nothing. You will not see a difference on a 10x8 print nor on a 20x16 print.

As a consequence of Canon's overproduction and overselling, the market has been utterly ruined for new cameras. Who on earth is going to buy a new camera when they can buy a secondhand camera that's had hardly any use for peanuts? If I went for a mirrorless camera then I'd get secondhand and certainly not new! Indeed for the night sky photos I'd like to take, it might even be worth buying a secondhand mirrorless then simply selling the Canon stuff due to its redundancy. Honestly, I just can't see how the $300-$400 cost of a wide prime (even a budget model) can be justified when the mirrorless equivalent is so much less. In terms of modern technology, even a $175 camera comes with higher ISO than my XT and a zoom lens that's almost as fast as the budget prime. 

Buying a camera, these days, is pointless unless it has WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and NFC built in. It's equally pointless to buy a big camera when the market is clearly favoring smaller cameras. Its certainly not possible to get smaller than a phone camera! So, the question is - how is Canon etc going to manage to sell their overpriced junk? Seriously, if the camera is going to be worthless in 10 years or 5 years then what's the point in buying it? Better to spend the money on hookers and have some value out of it! I certainly don't feel I've had good value out of my Canon camera. And before you go on about my needing to use it more, I've had a phone camera for 3 years and have already taken 6,000 photos with it. That's  way more than my DSLR in 10 years!

Mobile thinking

Mentally wandering along Tottenham Court Road, I've been wondering about how to go about photography without a working Macbook. Certainly I can use my Android tablet to work on photos but the lack of RAW processing and the lack of a way of uploading RAW (or even JPEG for that matter) to my tablet is a hinderance. Another problem is the lack of a way of transferring the photos to bulk storage. Certainly somewhere (unless I have since thrown it out) I have a bulk storage unit from which I removed the hard drive. That thing was expensive and not all that great. It was pretty much before its time - it needed a flash hard drive rather than a moving hard drive.

As m'lady is set to abandon her satellite internet, I'm back in the position I was in last year when I abandoned Windstream. She`s doing it for very much the same reason - cost. She's paying $80 a month for 10GB of data. I was paying $55 for unlimited data. The problem is that neither of us uses more than about 2GB. My phone comes with 5GB which should cover me for all I need. She'll probably use my MiFi pad and use $40 of data every 2 months (a $40, 4GB package only expires after 2 months).

Thinking about the motorhome I've been building over the last year or so, that will require mobile internet. This was factored into my thinking hence the MiFi pad. Another reason why I particularly like the MiFi pad is that I'm not advertised as being in a particular location. Windstream had a nasty habit of publishing my name, address and Windstream phone number in the Windstream phone book. That was particularly worrysome because at the time I was being stalked quite intensively. Since I never actually put a phone on the line, using it purely for DSL, I never got any harrassing phonecalls. Having said that, I did try plugging a phone in and from dawn til dusk I'd be getting advertising calls. That phone lasted 3 days before being unplugged and dumped in the eBay box.

One of the irksome things about my old-school digital cameras is the total lack of connectivity. Bluetooth, NFC and WiFi are the only ways to communicate with tablets and these days with many laptops. Loath as I am to sell something for half a peanut, I might be forced to do just that, purely in order to keep taking photos. I can't really see my buying another Macbook when they cost almost 4 times what a Windows laptop does. Mind, if I did buy a laptop, Windows would not last much further than the "Do you agree to the terms and conditions" because the answer would be an emphatic no. Instead, I would install Linux. Linux has improved in terms of user interface, dramatically since it was first released and now ranks on a par with Mac. Windows is left behind in the dust.

Going forward, the future definitely looks mobile and lightweight. One of the main concerns is something that can be charged off a non mains voltage supply. Tablets, phones and mifi pads can all be charged via USB. Cameras have a problem as the chargers are all bricks that hang off a wall socket and gobble 110v. Perhaps I should say that's the problem with my camera. My decade old superzoon compact that no longer takes good photos takes AA batteries which are easily chargeable while mobile. Modern cameras don't take AA batteries which is in my opinion a gigantic leap backward. Instead they use non standard lithium batteries that cannot be used in any other device and each battery needs its own funky little charger.