I left the Canon sys­tem for Fuji­film back in 2016. The Fuji gear was fund­ed by the sale of most of my Canon cam­eras and lens­es. How­ev­er, at the time, I was­n’t able to get a decent price for my Canon 7D and EF 35mm F1.4L lens. Even­tu­al­ly, I passed it along to my mom. She gave the com­bo a few attempts before giv­ing up due to a lack of both knowl­edge and the lim­i­ta­tion of a sin­gle focal length. She asked if I could find her some­thing cheap and zoom­ing. So I start­ed to browse Face­book Mar­ket­place and Kiji­ji for list­ings peri­od­i­cal­ly. And boy, I found myself a gem last week — a well-pre­served Canon EF‑S 17–55 F2.8 IS USM for a measly $450! It was the lens I dreamed about but could­n’t afford when I had my first DSLR in 2006/7. Now it’s mine. And it pairs pret­ty well with the orig­i­nal 7D (which I bought in 2009).

Below are a few test pho­tos of my dog from ear­li­er in the day. They show that you don’t need the lat­est and great­est gear (or full-frame cam­eras) to cap­ture excel­lent pho­tos of things you care about. The old pho­tog­ra­pher’s adage remains true: you’re bet­ter off invest­ing in lens­es.