The photo cab­i­net at The Tech was look­ing a lit­tle empty last night. I pos­tu­lated that we were miss­ing $10,000 of gear. After con­duct­ing a thor­ough inven­tory today I was relieved to find that my esti­mate was high: we’re actu­ally miss­ing only $8,851.62 of equipment.

An inter­est­ing prob­lem appears in the val­u­a­tion of dig­i­tal cam­eras. Although the lenses and film cam­eras are worth nearly the same today as they were 5 years ago, a dig­i­tal cam­era bought in Feb­ru­ary 2000 for $4,999 is now worth $625. Some invest­ment, isn’t it.