An Old Camera, Dream Lens, and Black Dogs

Lily and I spent a night at my par­ents’ place this week­end. Our dog was over­due for a hair­cut, and my mom hap­pened to be his groomer.

My folks have two dogs—Black Russ­ian Ter­ri­ers. Over the years, my mom has become deeply involved in Ontar­i­o’s BRT com­mu­ni­ty. She par­tic­i­pates in dog shows, where her younger dog, Ere­mey, has won mul­ti­ple awards for his breed and group­ing. He’s also a stud dog who’s sired sev­er­al lit­ters of pup­pies for one of my mom’s breed­er friends. All of this is to say he’s a high­ly pho­tographed dog.

In the past, I’ve stepped up to take pho­tos of Ere­mey, pup­py lit­ters, and some dog show events. But my par­ents live 90 min­utes away, the dog shows are spread over much of South­ern Ontario, and I’m not always avail­able when pho­tos are need­ed. So, I gift­ed my mom my old Canon EOS 7D and bought her a used EF‑S 17–55mm f/2.8 IS USM so she can take pic­tures when I’m unavail­able.

Canon intro­duced the EF‑S 17–55mm lens in 2006. That year, I bought my first DSLR, the Canon 30D, and I remem­ber vora­cious­ly read­ing every review of the lens that I could find. The younger me thought it was per­fect in every sin­gle way—a fast aper­ture, image sta­bi­liza­tion, and impres­sive image qual­i­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I could­n’t afford its almost $1400 price tag.

Despite the pas­sage of years and my exten­sive expe­ri­ence with high­er-end cam­eras and lens­es, I con­tin­ue to be fond of the old EF‑S 17–55mm. I appre­ci­ate the old cam­era, too. The 7D has aged mar­vel­lous­ly and is a tes­ta­ment to the remark­ably con­sis­tent and log­i­cal ergonom­ics of Canon’s pro­sumer and high­er-end cam­eras. With this in mind, when my mom asked me to join her in walk­ing our dogs on Sun­day morn­ing, I left my Fuji­film X‑H2s and grabbed the Canon 7D with 17–55mm instead.