Wednesday, January 9, 2008
It Seemed Like a Good Idea At The Time...
Posted by Jason Dunn in "Digital Home Talk" @ 06:30 PM
Have you ever had one of those experiences buying a piece of technology where you thought you had a good plan going in, but in the end things just didn't work out? I've had just such an experience, and since it involves a camera lens, I figured I'd share it here. The short version of the story is that I bought a 2 GB SanDisk Sansa Clip for $59.99 and spent $84 on a cab fare getting there and back. The long version of this story is below.
I'd already purchased the Nikkor 24-70mm lens (hopefully it, along with the D300, will arrive tomorrow), but I wanted something with some serious zoom. My Nikkor 18-200mm is a great lens because with the 1.5x factor it gives me 300mm of zoom but still remains wide enough at 27mm to be used in relatively tight quarters. When I heard about the Tamron lens that runs the huge gamut from 28mm to 300mm, I was quite interested. It's not a fast lens, starting at f/3.5 and dropping all the way down to f/6.3, but on my forthcoming D300 it would give me an impressive range of 42mm to 450mm - and since I tend to want extreme zoom outdoors in sunlight, the slower speed wouldn't be that much of an impediment. Also, because it has anti-shake, even if I was using it indoors, it would help smooth things out.
The price of $399 USD also seemed extremely good. A local camera store wanted $660 CAD for the lens, which seemed quite ridiculous, so for a while I was planning on ordering it from Ritz Camera's online store, which has an option for shipping to Canada - I could get the lens, including taxes and duty, for about $470 CAD. But I thought since I was going to be in Las Vegas for CES I'd pick up the lens while I was there, save the money on shipping, and be able to use it right away.
I'd already purchased the Nikkor 24-70mm lens (hopefully it, along with the D300, will arrive tomorrow), but I wanted something with some serious zoom. My Nikkor 18-200mm is a great lens because with the 1.5x factor it gives me 300mm of zoom but still remains wide enough at 27mm to be used in relatively tight quarters. When I heard about the Tamron lens that runs the huge gamut from 28mm to 300mm, I was quite interested. It's not a fast lens, starting at f/3.5 and dropping all the way down to f/6.3, but on my forthcoming D300 it would give me an impressive range of 42mm to 450mm - and since I tend to want extreme zoom outdoors in sunlight, the slower speed wouldn't be that much of an impediment. Also, because it has anti-shake, even if I was using it indoors, it would help smooth things out.
The price of $399 USD also seemed extremely good. A local camera store wanted $660 CAD for the lens, which seemed quite ridiculous, so for a while I was planning on ordering it from Ritz Camera's online store, which has an option for shipping to Canada - I could get the lens, including taxes and duty, for about $470 CAD. But I thought since I was going to be in Las Vegas for CES I'd pick up the lens while I was there, save the money on shipping, and be able to use it right away.
