A not so amusing anecdote. The scene is five years ago. I'm sixteen, there is nothing anyone can teach me about photography. I know it all. I am Walter Chin, I am Max Dupain, I am god. Exploring My grandmother's boyfriend's (that sounds a bit off, but anyway) possessions. He Has just died. Betty, My grandmother, says to me, John had an old Camera that he didn't ever use, do you want it Huw, I say, full of cocky know-it-all-ness, yeah, I'll take a look. She unwrapps a box full of a camera still in it's plastic wrapping, never opened, never used, and four lenses, ditto condition. I look it over, and say - No, this is a crappy camera company. I mean, It was a manual focus camera for god sakes, and I had just been given a Minolta Dynax 7000 - Which had everything that opened and shut, focused for you and did everything except make you a cup of tea, and there was an attachment that did, in fact make you a cup of tea! So I left it there. A couple of weeks later I was informed that Hasselblad did in fact make pretty good Cameras, and were worth a good deal of money, So I raced back to Betty's to discover that she had hired some blokes to take all the unusable, the unwanted junk in the garage, including a Brand New hasselblad with four lenses, to the tip!!! HOw many people just groaned? Ahhh, the follies of youth!!!!

-- Huw Crosby (crosby@magna.com.au), June 21, 1999

Answers

Thank *GOD* you didn't turn down a leica.

-- Paul Klingaman (Paul.Klingaman@Veritas.com), June 24, 1999.

A fellow I used to work with once lost his Leica.

He was at a thrift shop trying on a shirt, so he set his Leica down on a nearby table. He decided to buy the $2 shirt, and left behind his $1000 Leica M4.

He was upset.

-- Brian C. Miller (brianm@ioconcepts.com), July 07, 1999.