Here is a sample from that lens.
The green heron was photographed locally near Gettysburg, PA.
Ebay has been kind to me this year. Soon after the lens arrived a mint condition TC140B Nikkor teleconverter popped up on Ebay and I grabbed it at an exceptionally great price. Been lucky with mint condition, both caps and clean inside and out. Need more practice with both the 300mm and the 1.4 teleconverter, but I'm getting the hang of it.
It became obvious to me that I had outgrown my trusty ThinkTank Urban Disguise 30. Shopping around for a new camera bag is not an easy task when where you live does not have a single full service camera store with anything more than point and shoot bags. My travels allowed me to visit camera shops all over the states and try different bags. I wanted another ThinkTank bag. The quality and thought that goes into their designs and manufacturing are not equaled by any other bags on the market. I also needed a bag that would allow me to carry a laptop when necessary. The perfect solution was the ThinkTank Streetwalker Pro. You would be amazed at the amount of equipment you can fit safely and securely into this bag. I highly recommend the bag for any one with the need to carry around more than the basics and a laptop.
One more major purchase (Ebay of course) was a mint condition Nikon MB-D200 battery grip. I was running with one battery till then and found myself more than once running low on juice. The battery grip allows you to install two rechargeable Nikon batteries at a time. When one battery drains the grip switches to the second battery for more battery life than I need for one session.
I made on mistake this year. I purchase a low price "Nikon" EN-EL3b from a store on Amazon. Fully charged I headed out for a full days field trip with the Harrisburg Camera Club to Gettysburg, PA. It was not even halfway through the day that my D200 started to act flaky. Error messages, sometime it worked other times it froze. Thinking the worst, I sat down and went through a full problem determination sequence. Of course the first thing I check ( and last thing I expected to find) were dead batteries. How could I have possibly gone through two batteries in such a short amount of time? Lucky for me another club member had a spare EN-EL3b I could borrow and the rest of the days shooting was saved.
Once I got home into the charger both batteries went. After they both showed full charge, I tried them in the MB-D200 grip again, checked the battery meter and found that one battery was already low. Hmm, maybe I had a defective battery grip? Trying each battery in the camera without the grip gave the same results. One battery fully charge and one about 80%. Wait a minute. What's wrong with this picture. Aha, picture. At that moment I remembered a Nikon technical article on counterfeit batteries. Wow, was I surprised to find out that the "low price" battery purchased through a store on Amazon was counterfeit. That explained all the trouble I was having with the camera and the grip.
Move forward a month to the PhotoPlus Expo in New York City. Knowing what a real vs. counterfeit battery looked like I was able to purchase at a reasonable price a real Nikon EN-EL3b battery. I recommend visiting the Nikon site to check before buying batteries so you won't get burned on a cheap imitation like I was.
Oh the trip to Gettysburg....yeah. Here is an example of what you can find in the area.
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| Sauck's Covered Bridge from the inside. Nikon D200, 29mm, f5, 1/6sec, ISO 100 |
For what it's worth,
Andy
