Prime lens or cellphone?

-
Which one should I get first?! I want to buy them both, but the budget constraint (I'm finally saving up this year, since the car has been fully paid) allows me to get only one this year... and that means I have to choose the one I needed more.

Choice #1: The prime lens

The lens I'm looking at is the 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor glass; it's supposed to be better at portraits, and more suited for no-flash-allowed low-light photography. Since I tend to take pictures at night or indoors, I have noticed that I'd always get blurry shots in low-light, no-flash conditions. A few nights of online researching, a discussion with my brother, and an interview with a camera supplies person in Makati, convinced me that to get crisp pictures at night, I need to use a faster lens than the one supplied with my camera.

Choice #2: The mobile phone

The mobile phone I'm currently using (courtesy of Ate Maddie) is a dual-band phone, very simple and inconspicuous enough for everyday use. However, past experience tells me that I need at least a tri-band phone with some CDMA connectivity.

Choice #3: Save up

Then before even having enough money to position myself into buying either of the two items, the logical side of me kicks in: I do have a new and decent piece of glass, and my phone works, so why get something that isn't really an immediate need? It is a more prudent choice to invest in an instrument that has compounding interest, and/or in mid-term fixed-income instruments. With the current state of the market, financial security should be my first priority (after three years of having nothing saved - because of my car loan - I need to catch up!).

Summing all these, I guess I would be buying the lens OR the mobile phone next year. *sigh*

Comments

  1. j rMarch 10, 2009 at 7:02 PM

    my logical mind would really feel like telling you to save up..

    "pero kung hinde ka rin naman makakatulog sa gabi..you know how it is when you just stare at the ceiling- thinking about how "50mm f/1.8 Nikkor glass" could better your portrait blah blah...

    give in to temptation. hihi!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Carlo CuevasMarch 10, 2009 at 11:36 PM

    i think you should buy a manual early prime lens which is very cheap then buy my iphone. because i badly want the 3G ones..

    ReplyDelete
  3. noah-angela pagdangananMarch 11, 2009 at 2:52 AM

    i would go for choice #3. hahaha... wag kang makinig sakin, gastadora ako.

    ReplyDelete
  4. rochie cuevasMarch 11, 2009 at 8:20 AM

    thanks for the comments y'all! i'm leaning towards saving up first. :D

    bibs, the nikkor lens is manual, which isn't very cheap here (it costs as much as the phone i want to get!). how much is your iphone :D haha! big sister discount ha! hehe

    julie, i can still sleep at night even without buying the lens. hehe. thank goodness! i just have to settle, in the meantime, towards how to get away with blurred shots. sigh

    noan, haha! i won't yield to your bugging me to buy either one! :D

    ReplyDelete
  5. Francesca ZosaMarch 16, 2009 at 5:35 AM

    its best to save up coz you just have been free from your car loan
    maybe you could save this year and when you have already saved then when you have sufficient savings you could spend now for the things you want coz both are not that important and of little value, those things doesn't gain value through time but rather looses its value since every after 3 or less months a new model comes in the market, product development always moves fast in due time you'd be able to see a better model than your current liking ^_~

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe...
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in...
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma...
Read more