Sold my favorite sports lens this week: The Canon 400mm f/2.8 telephoto. No, I’m not switching camera brands and I didn’t do it for the money. I simply had to accept the fact that at 61, old age and old injuries have caught up with me and I can’t lug 30 or more pounds of camera equipment around any more.
I bought the lens in 2007, primarily to shoot high school football. As soon as I started using it, I started having problems with my right shoulder. After a game, my right arm would be numb. Doctors first diagnosed tendonitis, then said it could be a pinched nerve. An MRI found town rotator cuff muscles. A surgeon wanted to cut but that meant six-to-eight weeks of down time, which I can’t afford. We tried cortizone shots instead.
The arm improved over the summer but I wasn’t using the 400mm lens to shoot softball, track, soccer and baseball. When football season arrived last fall, I tried the lens again and the arm got worse. The docs delivered the bad news: Lighten the load or face loss of use of the arm.
A spill on my motorcycle over the weekend sent me crashing to the ground on that same right shoulder and I woke up Monday morning with enough stiffness to limit my movement. So I made the decision to go through my camera equipment and look for places where I could take out some of the bulk. The 400mm was the first to go.
An ad on Sportsshooter.com brought a buyer within 30 minutes. UPS took the lens later in the day and my PayPal account is decidedly healthier.
Over the next few weeks, I will be looking at other ways to reduce the load of the equipment I carry on a particular assignment. Fewer bodies, smaller lenses, a carbon fiber tripod, etc. — anything that can help.
Old age can be a bitch.


The snow that blanketed Floyd County and most of the rest of Virginia ranged from 5 inches to a foot or more and winds drifted what fell into drifts of two feet and up.

March roared into Southwestern Virginia like the proverbial lion Sunday, dumping snow on the area in ranges from 2-8 inches or more.