Used Camera Database Blog

I’m backlogged as usual, but luckily I made some notes after trying a Yashica-Mat 124 for the first time about two weeks ago.  Since I think it might be useful to some of you to hear my first impressions when using an old-school TLR, I’ll provide my thoughts here.

Introduction

TLR stands for Twin Lens Reflex.  The twin lens stands for the two lenses involved — the bottom ‘taking’ lens (that actually puts an image on film) and a top ‘viewing’ lens that puts an image on the viewing screen.  The reflex portion of the term stands for the fact that a mirror is used to reflect the image from the taking lens to the viewing screen or focusing glass.  If you’d like to see the mechanical drawings for the camera, check out Assembling charts for the YashicaMat 124G — it can clarify a lot of these terms.  Of course, I have the 124, not the 124G, but the cameras are near identical in construction.

The Yashica-mat 124 is a popular Rolleiflex clone that is reasonably well-respected by used camera enthusiasts yet still relatively inexpensive on the used market (mine was $70, including shipping, although I got a good deal on it).  If you’d like to see current prices, check out my CamNotes page on the Yashicamat 124.

Anyway, I’m coming from a background of digital SLRs, so the 124’s waist level viewfinder and all-mechanical operation was definitely something new.  This first time I ran a single roll of black and white film (twelve 6×6 frames on a roll of 120) through the camera to test it out and check the quality.  The film was Ilford Delta 400 Pro, although I claim to know nothing about film variants at this point.

I’ve already gotten negatives and prints back for this shoot, but that’s another post entirely.  This post is just about first impressions.

Using the Yashica-Mat 124

Holding it in my hands, I constantly felt like I was going to drop the thing, but that is mostly because I do not have a camera strap for it.  Once I got used to it, it felt pretty good in my hands, and the build quality is quite good, much more solid than my Canon 350D (Rebel XT) and even more solid than my 20D.  Of course, pretty much everything on the camera is made out of metal, so that should be no surprise.  For reference, I believe the Yashicamat 124 was sold from 1968-1971, so this camera is almost forty years old.

Whoa, I didn’t think about it before, but the camera is older than I am! (and, sadly, in much better shape)

To use the waist level viewfinder, flip up the viewing hood and look at the viewing screen that it protects.  This screen provides an image equivalent to the film area (a little over two inches square), so it is pretty large.  Brightness is decent, but if you’ve got direct sun on your face or you are aiming into shadow, the viewing screen can be hard to see.  You can also flip up a magnifier (by pushing on the area on the face of a hood) which you put your eye to just like a normal viewfinder, but looking down instead of horizontal.  The magnifier does provide a much larger view and it can be easier to tweak focus, but I had a harder time focusing my eye through the magnifier and composing.  I definitely prefer the normal viewing screen.

And the viewing screen really is one of the neat parts of a TLR.  With a bright scene, it really is like there is a small TV in the camera showing you the view.  And the image itself is just beautiful (even though the mirror and viewing screen on my TLR are pretty dirty).  Strangely enough, the view seems almost 3-D to me — it is hard to describe, but I feel like I’m getting more than just a flat image from a viewfinder.  The one gotcha, at least with the Yashica line, is that the image is reflected left to right.  This is probably a result of the refractive image reversing through the lens and then the reflection correcting the image vertically but not horizontally.  The image reversal definitely interferes with my use of the camera though — I constantly moved the wrong way when composing and the whole process of framing a shot took a lot longer than I’m used to.  I’ve heard that you can get used to the reversed image, but I think it will take me longer than most people.

In practice, I found it was best to frame my shot by eye, then bring the camera up, focus, and shoot.  The prime lens (75mm, approximately a 45mm equivalent for 35mm cameras) is somewhat restrictive, so moving closer/farther from the subject while using the reversed image was quite difficult for me.  The focal length (equivalent to a normal lens) is fine, but the lens suffers from another big problem: the close focus distance is not very close at all.  I constantly found myself running out of focusing room as I tried to get details or a single face.

Flare is also a problem with the camera — many sites mention this — so I’ll likely invest in a hood in the future.

Focusing is achieved with a wheel on the left side of the camera that is very smooth and well-damped.  I had no problem getting good focus.  The shutter release is at the front of the camera under your right finger.  The winder falls on the side of the camera near your right hand.  I found that operating the camera (in terms of winding and cocking the shutter) was very fast and easy.

The “Mat” in Yashica-Mat stands for automatic shutter cocking — after taking a picture, you flip out the winding lever, wind it approximately one revolution clockwise until it stops, then go counterclockwise a quarter of a turn to cock the shutter.  It makes a strange ratchety noise when you wind it that is pretty loud.  I’ve heard that the 124G is much quieter to wind, but the 124 has a more robust winding system.  FYI, earlier Yashica TLRs use a knob for winding and a separate knob or lever for shutter cocking.

The shutter itself is quite a departure from a DSLR shutter.  First of all, there’s no mirror to lift out of the way before firing the shutter — so you can see the image the whole time you release the shutter, and the sound of the shutter is minimal.  Usually just a tiny little ‘click’ that is easy to miss.  For longer shutter speeds, you can hear the mechanical shutter timer ticking down with a noise like one of those wind-up toys they gave kids in the 50s.

Shutter speed and aperture are adjusted with two small knobs between the two lenses (just to the side of them).  There is a readout on the top of the viewing lens that is easy to see when using the waistlevel finder.  I had no problems adjusting the exposure controls.  Of course, I had to do it manually, so I first shot an image or two with my 20D, then set the Yashica Mat to the same settings and shot a frame or two.  This was a very awkward and slow process and I’d really like to get the meter on the Yashica-Mat 124 working at least a little bit.  Oddly enough, the meter actually responded sometimes when I was shooting, and showed an exposure very similar to what I got from my 20D.

The Yashica-Mat 124 meter is a match-needle type, meaning you have an orangish ‘hook’ and a ‘needle’ (actually, just a meter indicator) that you try to get to line up.  The aperture wheel and film speed setting move the ‘hook’ mechanically, while the combination of shutter speed and light sensor move the needle.  The idea is that when you match them up, you have a good exposure.

Of course, the meter in the 124/124g is notoriously unreliable and imprecise, but at least it would be something to keep me from dragging around my 20D every time!

Subjects and Results

My main subjects were my kids, although I took a shot or two of my house to test exposure and different apertures.  The kids, of course, were one of my problems — my kids move a lot!  Furthermore, 400 speed film is great for shadows, but with direct sun you have to stop down significantly to get a shutter speed the camera can actually do.  Luckily, my kids were good sports, because I spent way more time struggling to frame the image and mucking with the settings and focus than I spent taking pictures.  Ultimately, a camera is only as good as the images it lets you take, and this TLR, at least for the first time, got in the way more than it helped me.

With practice, I think I can do better, but ultimately this is not an action camera.  Which is probably why editorial shooters shifted from TLRs to SLRs in the 60s.  But, the larger negative can definitely help out with landscapes or detailed portraits for a much lower price than a large format camera or a 20MP+ digital camera.  I’d like to experiment more with my 124, but ultimately, it will not be a camera I grab when there’s any action involved.

Anyway, I hope this information helps you, especially if you are considering an old TLR like my Yashica-Mat.  If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment!

And, expect a post in the next few days about the results of this first shoot!

I’m finding that film photography ends up being very expensive per image, on the range of 50 cents per frame on 35mm and $1 for every medium format frame (still crunching the numbers a bit on this, but I hope to post an analysis soon).  The actual film and developing is not the majority of this cost, surprisingly, especially for black and white film — if you process it at home.  The main bottleneck is getting from the negatives to a published image, be that an image online, or 4×6 prints, or a framed photo on the wall.

As much as I like the purity of film, it is important for me to be able to use my images in a digital format, even if I take them on film.  I know, I know, you are probably wondering why I’m bothering with film in the first place — that’s a debate for another day.  But scanning costs, especially for medium format, quickly skyrocket.  Again, 35mm scanning is readily available, often for $2-$3 more at the same place you get your film developed with 4×6 prints — simply because they just develop your film and then immediately scan it for printing digitally.

For example, the image above was processed at my local Costco.  I ordered the scanned images on a CD and found that the scanned images were about 6 MP, or 3072×2048.  This is approximately 2200 dpi.  You can see from the 100% crop below that these scans are pretty clean, and the resolution is right around the resolution of the film grain.  Not bad, right?

Granted, this is a 400 speed C41 process film, so it is not necessarily the most fine-grained film out there.  But I suspect the only time you’d ever need more resolution than this is if you want to print 8×10s or larger.  And for web use, you could get away with a lot less.

So, that got me thinking… why pay the extra $2 on each roll of 35mm film, or more appropriately, the $10-$20 that it takes to scan medium format film professionally, if I have a flatbed scanner right next to my computer?  Wouldn’t it do a pretty good job of scanning film?

Well, apparently not:

Yes, this is the best I could do from my Canon MP470.

It boasts 2400×4800 dpi, which should be at least as good as a pro film scanner, right?  Uh… no.  The biggest problem, other than limited resolution (1200 dpi was the best I could get it to do), is tonal range.  I had a really hard time getting it to scan film negatives, which look pretty dark compared to what the scanner is designed for (paper), and then inverting the image without losing the light colors.

Granted, I’ve heard that some of these flatbed scanners have attachments for film, but there’s got to be an easier, cheaper way.  And, for the 120 film I’ll get out of my Yashicamat 124, it should be even easier to get a decent scan (i.e. 4MP or so).

So, I’m going to look into some DIY scanning techniques.  I’ve already formulated a plan using my digital camera, a macro lens, a flash, and some diffusion, so I just need to try it out.  I’ll keep you posted.  FYI, some DIY scanning pages I’ve found are Photocritic’s Makeshift film scanner and DIY scanning solution at Photoforum similar to what I was thinking of.  From what I can tell, the biggest challenge is getting color and dynamic range correct, especially with negative film.  Heck, I might even need to worry about gamma adjustment!

Either way, I’ll keep you posted.

And, in other news, I got some 120 film for the Yashicamat today.  I went ahead and got one of each chemistry: black and white negative, color negative (C-41), and color slide (E-6).

Just a quick note to tell you about the beta version of the site including CamNotes.

The new lens area.

The new notes area.

I’m still in the middle of adjusting the look and feel of the new site, so it will take a while.  The good news is that the look and feel of the new site will be much easier to change than the existing code.  Much of the interface is identical to the previous site, just with reformatting on the lens end of things.

The notes area is styled after the lens area but it has an important distinction — more than just lenses can be listed.  I’ve been using it for the past few weeks in my search for a TLR and it has been working quite well.  Now, you can make a customized page for any item that you can search for on eBay, get historical prices, store your links to info about the item (and your comments!), etc.  I’ll keep adding to it as I think of new features.

I’m not sure when I’ll converge the new area (“dirtbox”, because I needed something past “sandbox”) to the main site — before I do I want to do more on the style sheets and (hopefully) get lens ratings in.

Another set of functionality I’ll implement soon is a search facility for CamNotes.

Feel free to test them out, and have fun!

Development here has slowed down even more since my day job has been taking a lot more of my time.  I do have a number of new features prototyped in a beta site but I’m waiting to release it until I can fix a number of cosmetic things — it will take a little while at my current rate of development.

I did just purchase a Yashica-Mat 124, so more on that soon.

And, finally, it appears google has dropped this site significantly in its rankings.  I have no idea why, but all search traffic has disappeared, so I’m going to need to track down the reason for that.

I mentioned earlier that I was still interested in trying film again.  Well, I’m currently visiting my parents, so I asked my Dad if I could borrow his Minolta X-700 MPS (what does that MPS stand for?) and run a few rolls of film through it.  He agreed, so I bought a 3-pack of Kodak BW400CN film and took it to the wedding we were attending as well as other family get-togethers.

My Dad hasn’t used his X-700 in about five years, but everything is in good working order and the camera itself has pretty good quality (X-700s still goes for a couple hundred on the used market). When I first held it, it felt very non-ergonomic and awkward compared to my 20D, but once I actually started to use it, everything fell into place and it was very gratifying to shoot with.

My Dad’s camera has a Gemini 28-80mm f/3.5-4.8 on it, which I haven’t researched yet, but is probably a middle of the road zoom lens.  The lens does not support all of the X-700’s features (including the P mode) but it seems like a pretty nice lens.  The push-pull zoom was a bit stiff though, and sometimes gave me a little bit of trouble.

At this point, I’ve shot two rolls with the camera/lens combination, developed one, and feel like I can make a reasonable assessment.  Not as much about the camera, since I do not have a lot of experience with film (it has been at least a decade since I last shot on film), but I feel I can speak to the process of using a decent manual focus camera.

The best way to summarize the experience is to say that I enjoyed using the camera.  As great as digital is, there is something about that solid tactile feeling of releasing the shutter, winding the film, and operating a manual focus lens that a fully automatic digital SLRs rob you of.  In fact, it was even fun to load and unload the film (although I could definitely see how reloading could be annoying in the long run).  In particular, the film advance on the X-700 has a positive, tactile feel and I had great fun using it — at first, I forgot to advance sometimes, but half-way through the first roll I was doing it automatically without thinking about it.  The exposure meter on the X-700 is also surprisingly useful and easy to use once I figured it out, especially the AEL (auto exposure lock) switch.  It helps that the main automatic mode is aperture priority mode, which is the most-used mode on my 20D.

Of course, not everything was good.  Manual focus is a pain in changing environments, and since I was mostly shooting vacation photos (read: kids), I found it hard to get the focus where I wanted it in time to wait for a good expression.  The viewfinder has a split prism, which I found really useful for getting great focus, but your eye has to be aligned well to use it and you also need a vertical (or horizontal) line to focus on.  The end result was a much slower speed of shooting since I had to spend more time lining up the shots, focusing, and conserving film.  Granted, I tend to take my time lining up shots anyway (to a fault, sometimes) but I slowed way down with the X-700 and missed a number of shots because I was not ready for them.

Overall, adjusting between the cameras (I had both the 20D and X-700 in use at times) caused a little confusion, but not as much as I would have expected.  Other than trying to chimp the X-700 and wind the 20D, that is!

What really highlighted how far consumer photography has moved in the last ten or twenty years was developing that first roll of film.

I chose Kodak BW400CN simply because it was the only black and white film Walmart sold.  And I wanted to go with black and white this time around since I’ve been itching to shoot B&W for a while.  Sadly, the choice of black and white films is limited.  Very limited.  In fact, I purchased at Walmart because the local grocery store, Wegmans, only had a few types of film (all Kodak, only 200 and 400 color).  Walmart had slightly more choice, but there was a heck of a lot more display space allotted to the memory cards than the film!  And the reason BW400CN is the only one Walmart stocks?  Because it is a B & W film that can be developed using the color process.  Meaning the places that only do simple photo development (like Walmart) can develop it with the same process they use on color film.

So, I developed the film at Walmart too, using their 1-hour processing.  The first surprise was that it cost $7.25 for single prints!  (although, according to my Dad, it was that expensive in the old days, too).  And, as my Dad pointed out, it is a hybrid film/digital process because the negatives are developed chemically, then scanned, then printed on the digital printers they use for direct digital printing.  I have to search around a bit, but I believe a full chemical processing from negative to print would be pretty expensive and hard to find nowadays.

The end result was that that processing did not seem very authentic to me.  My 4×6 prints have a little bit of grain to them, but I can’t tell if it is the grain of the film or digital noise.  If I shoot on film, I’d rather have the process be chemical the whole way.  On the flip side though, Walmart gives you the option to get your images on a CD for an extra $2.50, an option that I did not take but probably should have, since I do not have a film scanner.

The results, though, were very pleasing.  I’ll probably share some images on my personal blog once I get back home, but I can make some qualitative statements.

Film, since it is a chemical process and non-linear, tends to be a little more forgiving on the high and low side of exposure.  Put another way, it has a higher dynamic range than digital (although digital enthusiasts would argue that digital is catching up quickly).  Yet film also has a certain look to it that is hard to replicate on a computer.  The images from my first roll really impressed me.  Sure, I had a few stinkers, but not as many as I expected and some of them were quite beautiful.  It is hard to say exactly why, but the film seemed to handle highlights, reflection off water, etc. in a much nicer way.

The Kodak BW400CN film, because it is black and white film using the color process, actually does have a bit of a color cast to it.  Specifically, I noticed that lighter areas of the prints tended to be a bit warmer (slightly reddish) while the darker areas were a bit cooler (slightly blue-greenish).  In some cases, that color cast helped the image, but in some cases the colors detracted.  I really don’t understand why Walmart doesn’t do a grayscale conversion after scanning — or maybe they do, but forgot to do it on my prints.

Either way, this experience solidifies my desire to buy a film camera.  I’m leaning towards a medium format camera, probably a low end TLR or something similar, since I’m curious to try the form factor and I think it’d be fun to play with.  I originally was ok with not having a meter built-in, but I may be rethinking that aspect now.  The meter on the X-700 was pretty darn useful when it came down to it.  I’d also like to get a low-end EOS film camera to let me shoot 35mm film with my EF lenses.

Either way, I’ll keep you posted!

Linking on the lens pages is now live (actually, it has been live for a few days). I’ve been meaning to link up some pages as a demonstration and write a post with linking policies, but I don’t think I’ll get to that for a little while.

I will put out the short version of linking policies though:

• Anybody can add links, but you must be logged in to do so (spam prevention).
• Only the link creator can edit a link, only an admin can delete them.
• Any and all links can be removed without warning at UCDB admin discretion — off topic links will be removed immediately.
• Abuse of linking will cause account suspension.

I’m really excited about the potential of links though because it allows anyone with a page relating to a specific lens to put that information in a useful location.  It is also a great way for users to get their site linked elsewhere on the web!

Yesterday, while driving to work I heard a small news segment on NPR about Kodak discontinuing Kodachrome, citing increased use of digital cameras and a decline in demand for film.

My first thought was: is film on the way out?

Along those same lines, when my Dad came out a week ago we talked about his old Minolta a little bit (note to self: borrow Dad’s Minolta the next time I am in NY) and he mentioned that a number of camera shops closed down in his area and the local grocery store, Wegmans, no longer does film processing.

It is just a matter of time before digital cameras become cheap and ubiquitous enough that the only people using film are professionals and quirky used camera enthusiasts…

* * * * *

Ok, maybe that’s a little strong.

Mass market film won’t disappear any time soon.  Kodachrome, while discontinued, is 74-year-old technology with a very difficult development procedure, even for professional labs.  While it is sad that such an iconic film is disappearing, it is not a film used by many and it seems like Kodak is making an intelligent choice.  Yet, Kodak, the in Rochester, New York, company that employed my grandfather (he always seemed to have a Kodak camera and Kodak film with him), is sending mixed messages to the media about film.  One side of Kodak’s mouth claims that film sales are growing while the other side admits to large losses and institutes layoffs.  All companies are hurting in this economy, but the digital side of Kodak was impacted the least last year.

You can only assume that the side of the company dealing with film took a beating.  And let’s be honest, when you think of Kodak, you do not really think of digital, you think of film.

* * * * *

Oddly enough, as time goes on I find myself more drawn to film.  One of my goals for this summer is to get my hands on an old film camera (preferably medium format, maybe a TLR) and run some film through it.  I’m also interested in developing some of that film myself, since I last developed film in high school but I still remember the magic of the process.

I doubt film will disappear or even significantly increase in price over the next decade.  But, it is impossible to deny that photographic film is in decline, and digital is the way of the future.  Film, slowly and surely, will become a niche market.

After a very busy period at my multiple jobs, I’ve now cut down to a single job and I’m starting to have a bit of time to work on UCDB.

Currently, I’m in the middle of adding user specified links on the lens pages.  This means we can compile a repository of relevant links for each lens type!  A prelude to the change was splitting the main lens view into two pages: an overview page and a pricing page (that includes previous sales).  Ultimately, I expect this will be split into even more pages (with tabbed viewing or other ways to navigate between them).  For now, though, two pages is all we need.

I’m hoping the linking will be live within the next week — I’ll describe more about it then.  Do not be surprised to see minor changes throughout the site as I make those changes and fix other problems that I see!

PS  Traffic has increased a bit.  Welcome new used camera enthusiasts!

PPS  See what people are most interested in here.

You may have noticed that there’s a few links in the upper right hand corner of the Lens Database pages relating to registering and logging in.  I think it is time we explained why the site accepts logins and requires registration for a number of tasks.

The general vision of the site is a collaborative place where camera hardware enthousiasts can share information and compile a large knowledge base of cameras, lenses, and accessories.  Well, a major part of that is collaboration, and the ability for anyone to edit information, add links, and score lenses.  Of course, this requires a certain level of trust that the users will not abuse or vandalize the database.  The easiest way to do that is to require registration before a user can modify the database.  This at least lets us track who is vandalizing the database and stop them before any real damage is done.

There are other advantages too: linking specific users to site information allows special features such as customized price displays, automatic tracking of prices on specific items, etc.  Furthermore, it provides a method to track reviews and comments and give rewards where rewards are due (more on that later!).

So, with that in mind, we urge you to register.  It is very easy, only requires your name, e-mail, and country (plus a password of your choice that is not visible to anyone else!), and lets you access all features of the database.  And we promise, the number of registered features for the database will grow quickly!

Also, we promise that you will never receive any unsolicited spam mail (infrequence announcements about UCDB excluded) and your name and e-mail will NEVER be sold or given to any other third party!

If you have any questions, let us know!

This is the first, short introduction to searching for lenses on eBay.  I can (and will) go into a lot more detail later, but it is important to start with the basics.

First, and foremost, I’ve found that manipulating search text is the best way to search.  Yes, there are a lot of other features for searching on eBay, such as searching categories and things like that, but there are many sellers that do not use categories correctly and often you’ll miss some listings that way.  The best way to get focused results is with a focused search string.  And the best way to get a focused search string is to figure out eBay’s logic, which isn’t that simple!

Of course, the best way to learn how to use search strings is to experiment.  So, go ahead and open up a window (or tab) to eBay.  Or, feel free to use the Search Page I created at UCDB to provide a fast way to experiment with searches (and to make it easier for me to show you the searches).

To give an example, let’s suppose we are looking for the original Canon EF 50mm f/1.8.  Specifically, that is version I, the one with the metal mount that goes for a higher price.  Typically, you should start off with a minimal search, since anything you list in the search space MUST be matched in the search results.  This means, if you specify a word that isn’t included in the listing you want, you’ll never see that listing!.  For the 50mm 1.8 the name is already pretty minimal, but you can quickly get into trouble searching for the Tamron AF18-200mm f/3.5-6.3 XR Di-II LD Asph. (IF) using the full text!

Let me say that point again, because it is important:

AND: The default for an eBay search is to match all the keywords you specify, an AND operation.  Order doesn’t usually matter though.

So, let’s start with just searching for ‘canon 50mm’.  It will return a ton of results (799 in my case), but that is ok — we didn’t specify the aperture.  And again, we’d rather see too many results than miss a good deal, so start small.  Also, note that ‘lens’ was omitted from the search.  Some people won’t put it in the title, so we’ll miss those listings.  Many people misspell ‘lens’ as ‘lense’, but believe it or not eBay catches that and converts it in the search!  (try it — both return the exact same results!)

The next step is to adjust the search to add the aperture, or search with ‘canon 50mm f/1.8′.   This knocks the results down to a more manageable 193 items, but we’re actually missing some.  I’ll go into more details on how eBay parses the search string in a future post, but the main thing is that eBay treats ‘f/1.8′ as essentially two keywords: ‘f’ and ‘1.8′, and only match items with both in the name.  But, it will not catch people who list the aperture as ‘1:1.8′, ‘f1.8′, etc.  Most sellers are savvy enough to include multiple keywords, but some are not.  That’s actually really good for us though, because if we spot listings no one else does, then we can sometimes save some money.  But how can we do an OR operation?  After all, we want to find the listings that use ‘f/1.8′ or ‘f1.8′ or ‘1.8′?

eBay’s construction for an OR operation is parenthesis.  Anything included between parenthesis and separated with commas is treated as an OR operation — at least one of those search keys must be included for a listing to be returned.  In this case, we can increase the number of hits (in a high quality way — we’ll never see the 50 f/1.4 or 50 f/1.0) by adding an OR on the aperture and focus specifiers to get ‘canon (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8)’, resulting in 363 hits.  Yes, adding in coverage of other formats for aperture (and focus — did you catch what we did and why?) can almost double the number of auctions found.  In fact, we might get listings that many other buyers do not see, which can actually save us money!

OR: Specify an OR operation by using a comma separated list of keywords inside parentheses.

But, you’ll notice that many of the hits are not relevant for us.  They’ll be on hoods for the 50mm f/1.8, or the FD version of the lens.  Some of that we can alleviate by being more specific, i.e. adding the mount, EF, as in ‘canon EF (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8)’ (167 listings) or better yet ‘canon (EF, EOS) (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8)’ (171 listings).  But the real problem is that we’re matching many titles we do not want to match, such as FD lenses or lens hoods.  Well, eBay has an option to exclude items with certain keywords too: a simple hyphen, or minus sign.

EXCLUDE: Any keyword preceeded by a minus sign (‘-’) will cause listings with that keyword to not be returned.

For example, to get rid of the pesky hood listings, use ‘canon (EF, EOS) (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8) -hood’ (100 listings).  Of course, that still has a bunch of stuff, including a lot of version II lenses, so my final search term is ‘canon (EF, EOS) (50, 50mm) (f/1.8, f1.8, 1.8) -fd -ii -mkii -hood’.  See if you can identify why I excluded each item.  The end result is a search that returns 31 very focused listings.  Sure, some of them may be mislabeled, but at least the number is manageable and we know that we haven’t missed and relevant listings.

Again, the power of a well-tuned search cannot be understated.  It can help you see the listings you want to see and avoid dealing with the listings you don’t need to see.  And, the best way to learn is… Experiment!

And remember — the Lens Database currently has over 200 Canon EOS lenses, each with tuned searches.  Feel free to steal our search strings as a starting point!