The one thing that might have made me change my mind about keeping the Canon R is being able to get a fast 24mm prime for it. They don’t make those in R series lenses, but the camera came with an R to EF lens adapter and I spotted a 24mm EF L f1.4 at Service and gave it a try after picking up the camera from a detector cleaning. It works.

My FD 24mm f1.4 is about all I ever put on my Canon Fs anymore. For my art photography that’s just about the only lens I need. I quickly gravitated to that focal length back when I was a teenager and nearly everything I’ve ever done, apart from my photojournalism work, is in that field of view. It just works for me. So much that now when I’m out and about and looking with my eyes I am judging what I see against what I know from long experience what that lens will see.

I couldn’t use any of the lenses I have for the 7D because those are all optimized for the APS-C detector, which is smaller than the so called full frame detectors. I had ideas of buying a full frame 5D, but that would come with the additional expense of a set of all new lenses and it just wasn’t in the budget. And anyway the 7D is a Nice camera and I have no issues at all with it’s image quality. I eventually found all the wide angle lenses I needed for it, but they’re all zooms, and some of them are very slow. I wanted another fast 24mm like that FD lens I have for the film Canons.

Well…I have one now. It could work on the 7D but on that camera it amounts to roughly a 38mm equivalent. Which I might someday need but it’s far from the angle of view I want for art photography. But it works just fine as the primary lens on that R. So I reckon now I’m keeping the R.

I have two 7Ds now…the one I’ve used for a decade for photojournalism and art, and the 7D mk II I recently bought because it has a built-in GPS. So I’ll probably sell the older one and some of its lenses. Won’t get much for it, but I don’t need three DSLRs. I’m still primarily a black and white film photographer.

I hate selling equipment that’s been good to me over the years…it feels like separating from an old friend. But sitting in a camera cabinet doing nothing is not a dignified end for a good camera. It needs another artist to love, or a photojournalist. There should be camera adoption agencies so I can approve the buyer before I let a camera go.