I love cameras. Cameras are my one (and probably my only) healthy addiction. My dad was a camera guy from the Kodak Instamatic, to the Polaroid, to his Canon FTB. Speaking of Polaroid, apparently my great grandfather, an electrical engineer who worked at Purdue, missed the patent on the light meter to some guy name Polaroid by 10 days. So yeah, cameras are in my family DNA, just like meat pies and back surgery. Oh to be a Britt.
Bigger is Better
If you aren’t a camera person, you probably don’t know that the most important part of any camera is the sensor, and when it comes to sensors, size matter. A while back I was wandering around on the YouTube when I came across this woman who was talking about the difference between crop sensors (smaller) and full frame sensors (bigger). Her point was that instead of buying a crop sensor camera, you should save your dough and get a full frame sensor when you can for all of the obvious reasons that camera junkies like me already know – like better bokeh, better in low-light, and a wider field of view. I went through camera puberty and moved from crop to full frame about 8 years ago, but the bell finally rang when she summarized her point and dropped what was perhaps the most profound slogan about money and consumerism ever invented: the poor man pays twice.
The Phrase that Pays
“The poor man pays twice”. It’s so smart, so on-point, and it has so many applications. You may not have heard it put this way, but you’ve fallen victim to it in some way in your life already just as we all have. Let me translate: when you’re going about making a decision to buy something and your choice is between the cheaper thing that will get the job done in the short run, and the more expensive thing that will last longer, give you better results, and/or that you can grow into, you’re better off going big than going cheap.
Let’s pause here: all of you thrifty, price conscious, cheap, tight ass, budget friendly types are no doubt wringing your hands and rolling your eyes right now. Maybe you’re a little ticked, maybe you’re telling yourself that I just don’t understand. Being a bit of a cheapo myself, I get it. But there’s a great irony at work here: the “pays twice” part means that if you do buy the cheaper thing, you’ll just end up just buying the more expensive in the end, and when you add the two together, well, you get it.
An Embarrassing Example
Here’s a small example and one that’s embarrassing because I already knew all of this stuff when I did it. Being a product of the 60’s I have certain habits that are difficult to change – like moving away from my paper calendar. It’s my binky and my blanky, and nothing with a screen will ever replace it. Anyway, a couple of months ago when the calendar turned, I needed to buy a new Daytimer so I went to Office Depot to get the one I used last year because I really liked it. I found one, then I looked at its price. “Come on, $22 for a simple little notebook? I can do better than that.” So I put it back and motored off to my nearest Walmart. As luck would have it, they had one, not identical, in fact a little smaller. I thought, “Well this is sporty and svelte, and its $10 cheaper. I’m in!” A week later I realized it was too damn small, so I tossed it and started hunting again.
This time I found another one that was a little bigger than last years, and just $12. “Problem solved”, I said to myself. And on the money front, I was breaking even because it was basically 2 for the price of 1.
A week later I realized calendar #2 it was just too big to lug around. Even with all of the self-justifications, savings calculations, and Tony Robbins rhetoric I could binge, I still knew I made a bad choice. Then I remembered that lady on the YouTube’s nagging little voice as she whispered, “The poor man pays twice…”. Shut up you bitch.
But she was right. The poor man really does pay twice.
We get our lessons in life from a variety of places. Some from our parents, some from our mentors, and of course, some from the bloggers among us. If you live in the first or even the third world, you’re a consumer and as a consumer you’re going to be confronted your own version of crop vs. full frame more than once. The next time you’re facing this decision and you’re wringing your hands, doing the math, and trying to figure out how you’re going to justify it to your spouse, just remember the phrase that pays: “the poor man pays twice”.
Good luck and have a good week.
Joe Still
2024.03.24
Cite
“When the dollar collapses, it’s not doing it in a vacuum. If the dollar loses value, it’s doing so relative to some other currency. So the purchasing power that we lose, somebody else gets.”
– Peter Schiff