Beyond economic repair

[ewx]

How do you decide when something is beyond economic repair? A while back I bought a rather nice lens second-hand for £400; new it would cost £690 (maybe a bit less depending how much time I spent shopping around). Since then the AF motor has failed and I've now put it in for an estimate to repair it.

My current thinking is that £200 seems a sensible limit (being half what I actually paid for it and still keeping my total expenditure less than having bought it brand new in the first place). Any other views?

Comments

[armb.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the expected future life of this one if it was repaired, of another second hand one (if you could find one), and a new one.
If you can buy another second hand lens for £400 that would be just as good as this one repaired, that's clearly an upper bound on what it makes sense to spend on a repair.
If the estimate was over £200, were you planning on doing without, or buying a replacement instead?

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Putting up with the lack of AF is a realistic option; I still get a red dot when the camera thinks it's focused and it's possible to get split focusing screens for DSLRs (handy anyway since one of my lenses is inherently MF-only).

[ewx.livejournal.com]

e.g. (http://www.katzeyeoptics.com/item--Canon-350D-Focusing-Screen--prod_350D.html). Though annoyingly no little red lights when you focus - so it's not a great all-round solution...