Spending money on something far removed from cameras and lenses. And cars. And travel. But probably among the best long term "investments."

 I use the word "investments" in quotes because the word connotes that one will have a financial return on their initial outlay of money. In this case, today, nothing could be further from the truth. 

At my last routine, twice yearly dental hygiene visit my (unconditionally adored) dentist discovered that one of my teeth needed a crown. I hate getting dental work done but my dentist has an incredibly gentle touch when it comes to injecting numbing agents and she's really good at keeping me informed and entertained during procedures. This morning I had to be in the dentist's chair at 7:30 a.m. Sharp. 

You probably don't pay what we pay in Austin for various dental procedures. A porcelain/ceramic crown with preparation and build up costs about $ 2,000 per tooth and it's one of the things NOT covered by my health insurance. I'm sure if you live in a rural area where many people don't want to live you'd be able to get the procedure done for much less money. You can probably buy a house there for a fraction of the price you'll pay in Austin, as well. But we live where we live and if we want services provided with the top flight health care professionals in our area then.....we have to pay the going price. 

But to put it into perspective we're talking about 2/3rds the price of a nice but well used Leica M 240 rangefinder camera, first made in 2012. Or 1/14th the price of a brand new Subaru Forester (the base model) so the cost of a crown does give one pause. 

But not taking care of your teeth will age you faster than just about anything else. Keeping all of your original teeth in your mouth and in good working order is also a hell of a lot cheaper than outfitting your gums with implants! And a lot less painful. Or so I've been told. And since one of my clients is a big oral surgery practice I think I'll believe my source on this subject. 

I hate medical procedures but mostly because I am afraid of them. My brain always tends to go to the worst case scenario and set up camp there. Last night my brain was laying out the down sleeping bags and working hard to start up the camp fire so the worst case scenario would at least be comfortable. 

But looking around for a silver lining; any silver lining, I discovered that my medical procedure anxiety is really efficient at interrupting my sleep which, in turn, does a good job of helping me remember the dreams I do  have while getting small snatches of sleep. 

Last night I had a vivid dream. It was about cameras. Specifically it was about Leica SL cameras. In my dream I was whisked away to a lovely hotel in a city that resembled Montreal. I came down from my fifth floor room in the elevator. I was wearing casual stuff. Old, worn hiking boots, a pair of well broken in jeans. An old, faded and rapidly devolving green sweat shirt, and a pair of glasses I'd never seen before.

When I walked into the small and pretentious lobby of the hotel I was greeted and warmly welcomed by several tall, well fed German men, each of whom looked to be about 50 years old and had the bearing of happy marketers. They were there to present to me a test camera that I was expected to use for several weeks or months. The actual time frame was vague and slightly out of focus. 

We walked over to a bright red couch that was bookended by matching, ultra modern, well stuffed chairs, the likes of which would be fun to have in your own living room for maybe all of ten minutes before the insane saturation of the fire engine red fabric started to burn your eyes... Every one took seats and I was bracketed by Germans. Nice Germans. Germans bearing temporary gifts. 

One man stood across a coffee table from me. He reached behind himself and pulled up a stout, bulky black leather case --- about the size of a roll-aboard wheeled case for travel --- but with stylistic touches referencing train travel in the 1930s. The case dominated the light colored wood accents of the table and surrounding  furniture. The same man reached forward and flipped the steel latches on the case and then opened it towards me. In full presentation mode. Sitting in the middle of a black foam cut out was a camera body that looked nearly identical to the Leica SL2 I had sitting in a cabinet back home. At the urging of the assembled Germans I pulled the camera out of the case and examined it. It was outfitted with a 50mm f2.8 compact SL mount lens (which looked very business-like but at the same time quite adorable...). Never seen or heard of that one before...

I brought the camera up to my eye and while I was looking through it the assembled company-men sort of narrated my progress, telling me that the EVF used APO glass for a better defined view while the screen in the EVF was 10 megabytes or ten million dots.. Can't remember exactly which. But I acted as though it was one of the most impressive feats a photographer could imagine. I performed a half press on the shutter button and was amazed at the incredibly responsive focusing action. The "guys" explained that it was a result of the new phase detect AF module combined with three Maestro processors running in parallel for extra speed. I asked about the RAW buffer in the camera and they answered almost in unison ----- "unlimited!!!" I asked about video and they did a dismissive frown and said, "Not on this model. This is a supreme stills camera." 

I noticed that, compared to my own SL2, that this camera was much lighter even though the body was, as far as I could tell, exactly the same (perfect) dimensions as mine. The company men were downright gleeful. "All of the body parts that can be made so are made of titanium." They rattled off the differences in weight between this camera and the past generation but, hey, in my dreams I am not a 'numbers' guy so I determined not to remember. 

I asked about the resolution and the basics of the sensor tech and was in for a bigger surprise. They had throttled down the overall resolution to 36 megapixels. Something about achieving the optimum look for the files. Something about an on-the-fly interpolation mode possible by the three processors. "If you need more resolution  you can implement it on -the-fly via the menu. Pretty much the same tech as multi-frame res. but done at a speed that can keep up with any shutter speed up to 1/8000th of a second. Seamlessly." They then added, "After exhaustive experiments and analysis we discovered that 36 megapixels is the absolute sweet spot for a full frame digital camera sensor and, with the new processors running in tandem, we can also give you up to 142 megapixels of actual resolution with the real time multi-frame. The benefit? At 36 megapixels the high ISO lack of noise is breathtaking." 

I nodded a vague understanding. Just as they were about to hand me the camera and invite me to use it for an open-ended length of time my medical anxiety ejected me from dreamland so I could conjecture a bit about how often it might be that a novocaine injection hits and kills a vital nerve in the gum line... making it all but impossible to drink hot coffee in the future without dribbling it down the front of my shirt...

But I think, really, my subconscious was preparing me for the first quarter announcement, in 2024, of Leica's new generation of cameras. They will be priced more expensively, pound for pound, than an Hermes scarf or a Piaget watch. Only insane people will consider buying one. They'll be on backorder for at least a year. But after my visit to the dentist today I called Leica in Germany to see if I could get on a waiting list. The person answering the phone in Wetzlar was very, very confused....

Now slowly sipping lukewarm coffee while wearing an old, coffee--stained t-shirt, waiting to be able to feel the rest of my mouth. 

When someone builds a time machine I'm heading back in time to tell my college age self to brush and floss our teeth, maniacally, so later in life we can spend outrageous sums of hard US dollars on German cameras. Most needed for a happy retirement. Right? Of course, from what little I know about time travel I will risk disrupting the time/space continuum in some dangerous way. But ya gotta take a few risks if you wanna play with the new SL3. What's a little ripping of the fabric of time?

So. Teeth. Money. Tragic loss of potential capital for cameras. Oh the humanity!!!

And just a few days before my birthday....sniff....