Back in the early days of this blog, I used to publish posts that were mostly pictures of plants and flowers. Especially at this time of year. I think that energy went into Twitter and now the Fediverse, where it’s so easy to take a picture and post it right then. This week I got a freshly-repaired lens back from the shop and it put me in the mood to get closer to the botanical frenzy springing at us from every direction. Herewith four pix of two plants, one of a lens, and more thoughts on a familiar subject: Whether it’s better to repair than to replace.
The lens, by the way, was the Fuji 18-55 oops its full name is “Fujinon XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS” so there. I bought it in March of 2013 and have dropped it more than once; I have retained 1,432 pictures taken with it over the years. But then it stopped working.
More words on that later, but pictures first.
Roses have names and this one is “Fru Dagmar Hastrup”. Therein lies a tale that is either 17 or 111 years old, depending how you count.
That’s the first picture I took with the repaired 18-55. But then I thought that the whole point of this basic zoom was that you could go wide to capture big things, or long to, well, zoom in on ’em. So I went out front.
Trees have names too. This is a White Ash (Fraxinus americana).
That ash is one of the trees lining the street we moved onto last October. It’s really immense. Let’s crank the zoom way wide and capture most of it. Doing this reveals really great geometry, so let’s subtract the color and add some Silver Efex sizzle.
And then we can zoom back in.
The closer you get, the better it looks.
Fixing that lens · I like quirky fast compact opinionated prime lenses just as much as the next photoenthusiast, but a decent midrange zoom is just too useful not to have. I could’ve replaced this one with the new-fangled 16-50mm (also has a long complicated Real Name but never mind). That would cost me extra money and might not even be better. ¶
So I poked around on the Fujifilm Web site and sure enough, they offer repair as a service, just package it up and mail it in. A few days after doing so I got an email quoting me a price and asking for approval, which I granted. You shouldn’t be surprised. Way back in 2011 I wrote Worth Fixing, the exemplar of which was a different excellent lens. And then just last year my Parable of the Sofa touched a few nerves. So I didn’t think very hard about it.
But then I realized I hadn’t even checked whether the price was reasonable. So I turned to eBay and, well, I could have got a mint-condition secondhand 18-55 for less than the cost of the repair. Not a lot less, but still. Oh well. If it were reasonable to care about a single instance of a standardized commercial product, I’d care about that lens.
Anyhow, it works pretty well. Showing its age, but still reasonably handsome.
If I live long enough maybe I’ll take another thousand pictures with it.
Comment feed for ongoing:
From: rick robson (May 19 2025, at 09:31)
Tim
Great pics. Keep an eye on the Ash tree. All the ones in the East have been killed by the Ash Borer. If it starts to go it is cheaper and safer to cut them before they are dead.Unfortunately our town was full of them. Rick
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From: Alex (May 19 2025, at 15:37)
Great lens, I was contemplating buying the new version ($1199! and sold out ATM), but for now Sigma 18-50 will do. Not an ideal lens by any means, but we are talking zooms here.
And 1K pictures is... very little, please get out more and flex the camera and yourself.
Cheers
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From: Robert Sayre (May 25 2025, at 13:10)
Just in case you are worried: this millennial caught the Stravinsky reference right away.
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