A friend asked me a few weeks ago if I had yet paid the white lens tax. The answer at the time was "no". Fortunately/unfortunately that is no longer the case. I booked a couple more weddings for the summer, and so an upgrade seemed warranted/subsidized.*

There's a rumour going around that you're not a "pro" until you have a profile picture of you holding a camera with an expensive white lens similar to this. What at first sounded like a joke and a half to me soon became a piece of sad fact: in a podcast I heard an interview with a fellow from a major lens rental website. He said they had a sale once for mid-week rentals, and they rented 70-200 lenses like crazy. When they tracked down a bunch of these first time renters, as best they could tell, many of them only rented the lens to have their Facebook and website profile pictures taken holding them, mounted on their camera, and then returned them without actually using it for a shoot. (I wish I could remember which podcast that was, but alas, I cannot). Apparently some people are quite desperate for a bit of "street cred".

Once again, not surprisingly, this goes back to my view of what is and is not "pro". I'm afraid that by that previous metric, I don't spend an awful lot of time looking like a pro, with my small Sony a6000 mirrorless camera and compact lenses (with the exception of this slightly large SEL70200g lens). I think I'll get over it, though...at least until people start asking me why I have a point and shoot attached to the back of a 'real' lens.

Because them's fightin' words. ;)

Time to get out there and break in the new kid. I have five summer weddings to prepare for!

*as a side note to my upcoming wedding friends, feel free to refer me to your friends for more weddings, so I can finance more "pro" lenses before your wedding. It's the circle of life...or something.