Happy Day!!

My birthday/mother’s day present came in the mail today. THANK YOU COLIN!!!! He got me a 18-105mm lens. For you that don’t know about cameras, let me enlighten you as to what this is so exciting. My camera came with the standard wide angle lens (18-55mm) and a telephoto lens (55-200mm) to take pictures of things really far away. My 18-55mm lens died several months ago, so any pictures you see on this blog were taken with our video camera (poorer quality) or my telephoto lens meaning I was standing at least 10 feet away from whatever it was in the picture.

I needed a normal wide angle lens and could have gotten a replacement 18-55mm for decently cheap. However, I really wanted a new lens that would cover both the wide angle and the telephoto ranges so I would never have to carry two lenses again. Those aren’t as cheap. I started looking at lenses on the internet that are less expensive because they come from the gray market. If the white market is the trade of legitimate goods and the black market is the trade of illegal goods, the gray market is some where in between. Gray market photography equipment is sold by companies other than the authorized representatives of the manufacturer. Don’t ask me how they get the cameras to sell them. This photography equipment is usually less expensive, but comes with more risk. I researched what gray market companies were reliable and got this lens from B&H. Everything went perfectly: the right product that works at the price they said.  This is what we look like now.