The most useless piece of photography equipment you have acquired?

[Hawthy]

I was almost seduced online by an f2.8 17-50mm zoom lens until I rationalised that I already had an 18-55mm zoom and that my f/1.8 prime lenses offered much better low light options. A close call but it got me thinking about all the useless pieces of photographic junk that I have acquired.

It started a few years ago when I received a Kodak tripod as a gift. It had big yellow plastic knobs on it that squeaked as you tightened them. It certainly turned heads but unfortunately had a steady drooping action. I also received a cube-shaped spirit level that is supposed to sit on your hot-shoe and show vertical and horizontal levels. Never used it.

I have added to the problem by buying a strap that screws into the tripod mount on the bottom of the camera. Never used it. Numerous cheap filters that I might have used once or twice. A cheap replica Lee filter system that is still wrapped. A microphone that I have used once. A nifty fifty that doesn't autofocus on my camera. The list goes on.

Plus the software - Landscape Pro. Just awful.

Just wondering if anyone else has my issues with buying cheap and nasty accessories that are never used.

[ameerat42]

Hmm! For me that would've been one of the first mirror lenses that became popular in about the early '80s.
It had terrible IQ for photography, but strangely, it was as clear as for looking through as a telescope. It was
so forgettable that I can't even remember the brand . When it finally drowned in a flood I actually
felt pleased and relieved, as I was loth to either throw it away or give it as a present.

Some years after - if you'll pardon a counterexample - I bought a Tamron 500/8 mirror lens which I still have and
which has worked dreamlikely all the time. I hardly use it on camera now because of its lack of optical stabilisation.

[Nick Cliff]

Andrew I guess my main error was buying an el cheapo Taiwanese $200 tripod that looked good in reviews and was crap in the field mate (legs slowly collapsing that's all with no warning with a camera and macro lens on it onto a concrete path).
It has a mono pod leg that I still use, the rest I would not try to sell as a tripod, my conscience will not allow it I notice this brand has largely disappeared after the initial fanfare in Australia.
A good learning curve with tripods as I know so many guys here say buy well once with tripods and I have done so since with all heavy duty tripods and ball heads.
With the zoom lens bit I bought one mid 80s 70-150mm Tamron (non SP) zoom lens in the early days that I considered was pretty ordinary compared to a Zeiss prime lens I was using at the time and the zoom lens ended up in the bin eventually and have opted for primes ever since or professional level zoom lenses, again a learning curve
Film era filters when going from film to digital means I have a heap of Haze and other filters, some are still used for special effects with macro photography. I keep telling myself I may need these filters if I ever want to shoot some B&W portraits etc.. and probably never will
So some similar poor choices over the years or advances in technology making so many older photographic items of little use now,

cheers Nick

[John King]

Me?

[Tannin]

This thread isn't long enough to list it all.

Now I feel stressed because it's so hard to pick just one.

Maybe my Canon G9X Mark II. It's a beautiful little camera and I really like it. Cute as a button. Absolutely nothing wrong with it. Takes a beautiful picture, fits in a shirt pocket. Incredible value for money when you think about it. But it hasn't got a viewfinder and I'm just not getting used to that. I rather fear it's going to travel all over Australia with me and never get used in anger. I hold it up to my eye, and that doesn't work of course, then I remember and hold it out in the approved style (same as a brainless tourist taking selfies) and have no real idea what I'm doing because you can't see the picture properly 'cause there is no viewfinder and the screen on the back is too small and too hard to read and too easily swamped by bright sunlight, so I take a couple of bad pictures and either give it up as a bad job or go and get a real camera and do the thing properly.

(PS: Andrew, I was hoping you'd do this. I was sort-of-vaguely meaning to extract those same bits of your post in the other thread and start it myself, but I saw something shiny and forgot.)

[MattNQ]

I went all retro and bought one of those old fashioned leather half case things for my olympus that screws into the camera and you flip the top half out off it.
Stupidest case ever. Have to unscrew the whole thing to get to the battery & memory card

[ricktas]

Many years ago.. in the 1980's..two filters.

1. Starburst.. that put little stars on all highlights in the photo. You could buy either 4 point or 6 point starburst filters. The sun reflecting off the sea never looked so good with all those little stars. And streets.. wow how all those lights looked great with their little stars.

2. Soft focus filter. Had a clear section right in the middle, and the rest of the filter was sort of foggy. Great for portraits (so they said). Gave you the Dynasty/Dallas soft focus portrait effect.... so dreamy. The result looked more like someone lost in a smoke filled room.. when smoking was still acceptable and most pubs were filled with smoke... or had a fog machine pointed at their head.

Remember this was before digital.. so all on film... and people would oohh and aahh at the photos and say how they loved the way I made them look pretty, by basically blurring everything out except their eyes. I cannot recall every stacking these filters.. which would have been so 80's kitsch. Blurry (foggy) and Starry.

[ameerat42]

As an epilog to my tale above, I remember rescuing the knurled rubberised/plastic sleeve that
covered the focusing section of the lens barrel and using it for like purpose on another lens.

Adjunct to Rick's post: I made a soft-focus filter using flat cardboard and tube, with the "filter"
being a piece of stiff baking paper with a multi-point star pattern cut from the centre. It did
work quite well - for the half-dozen times I tried it before tiring of it (Total cost at the
time <$1 [/Scrooge icon])

[Tannin]

poor choices over the years or advances in technology making so many older photographic items of little use now

That would be me you are talking about.

And they weren't "poor choices", they were just "healthy experimentation and exploration of the social boundaries". And those five years I spent in the de-tox ward, that was just an accident. Could have happened to anyone.

[Brian500au]

I think for me my most useless accessory is a set of pocketwizard flash remote controls I bought whilst I was working in the USA. I had every intentions of setting up my strobes to work HSS but in all honesty I have just never found a use for PW's. The strobes I have have their own dedicated trigger and can also be set up to be optically triggered, so I can simply use the existing Canon external flashes I have to trigger them.

Add on top of that the set I have are USA frequency and are illegal in Australia just makes my pain worse.

Don't get me started on camera bags.....

[Bensch]

Hmm, so many to choose from....

Top two would be

• A knockoff Cokin P system from eBay, all the ND filters gave a purple cast, have two folders of coloured ones that haven't seen the light of day.
• Varible ND filter (again a cheapy), while it also gave a purple cast, when you darken it, the middle is almost black (or is that purple) and the outside is light.

It started a few years ago when I received a Kodak tripod as a gift. It had big yellow plastic knobs on it that squeaked as you tightened them. It certainly turned heads but unfortunately had a steady drooping action.

You mean one of these? Aren't they like a rite of passage or something

Yes, it is a picture of my one

IMG20180816135008.jpg

[Hawthy]

That's it! I remember that winding mechanism on the side that was prone to sudden collapse. I think that I still have mine somewhere.

[Liney]

I've been quite lucky, or maybe I haven't rushed into a purchase unless I'm sure I really had a use for it.

I did splash out on a whim after reading an article on infra red photography and bought a roll of infra red film and an infra red filter. Wandered around taking what I thought were good images but come developing i had 12 rather blurry grey images (the infra red filter made it difficult to see what I was focusing on).

End result, I never bought any more infra red film but still have the filter. It came in handy looking at a partial eclipse and has been useful on bright sunny days to give some nice effects.