Accepting the obvious
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.