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My camera is still in for repair and only in its absence do I notice all the things I want to do with it. I want to go light painting, I want to shoot portraits, and I want to take macro shots of household objects because I can.

I’ve borrowed my brother’s camera in the meantime and it more provides a security blanket rather than filling the full-frame DSLR shaped hole in my heart. While reviewing pictures of something from Saturday I found almost all the pictures were a little blurry. The sharper sound of the shutter on this camera made me think it was somehow faster.

Godspeed to my grey market, beat to shit, out of warranty Canon 5D Mark II that I bought from a man from Hong Kong in a parking lot in cash, godspeed.

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I woke up at 9:30 because that’s when the heat of the solar furnace/tent became uncomfortable and breakfast was a hearty affair of egg/bacon/egg/bacon/egg/bacon. I was still groggy, so I passed the keys to Mike and the four of us drove to Fort Ticonderoga. Pat called shotgun and said “there was a time when I would have felt bad taking the passenger seat from you”. I get the queerest compliments.

Fort Ticonderoga was hot and sunblasted and my camera was producing an “Err 30” which Google tells me is a shortcode meaning “prepare to give Canon your credit card”. Here is where I would normally show you all the pictures of the fun we had but I cannot for two reasons: 1) my camera was broken 2) we had none.

The second part is a slight overstatement but most of the traditional parts of the fort were quite dull. The encampment did have a sutler played by a very learned fellow from who was generous with his time and answered every question we could conceive of. Stepping away from the table, Mike spoke for all of us when he said “Now it was worth it”.

We returned to camp along a different route that was more Interstate and less state route and collapsed into individual nap-states in our tents. After waking, we tried to go swimming, then tried to go boating, then went swimming, then went sitting. The sitting proved the most popular and a very steamy dinner was made. Mike turned in early and the important part of the weekend to me happened: we talked. Man-time!

Note: There was a previous version of this post where every major action except for Mike driving was followed by “So Mike went to sleep”. Mike got a lot of bad sleep during the course of the weekend. May his sleep debt be paid before we next camp.

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By no longer buying Magic cards on a tri-monthly basis I’ve had a little extra cash to direct towards other things.  I wanted to get a replacement 70-200mm f/2.8 lens for a while as my current one just wasn’t cutting it and about a month ago I started looking for a replacement.  The current Canon lens of that type has very powerful image stabilization but is about $2400 so I was happy to find a used version of the previous generation for $1200.  Attempting to maintain my frugality, I didn’t jump on this immediately thinking it may drop further only to see both copies that were available through lensrentals.com disappear a few days later.  I then saw borrowlenses.com had one for about $1400 and I held off thinking it may drop to what lensrentals.com had been offering.  It too was gone shortly thereafter and eBay was my next source with the lens available at about $1700, $500 above what I had first seen it at.

At this point, I found copies of the newest 70-200 for about $2050 used and bought one at a mere $850 above my initial intended price.  I’ve used the surplus cash I had from Magic…. for all of 2011, and my tax return, and my birthday money.  Buy high, sell low.

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I’ve been playing email ping-pong with someone who wanted one of my camera lenses and I arranged to meet him at the Market East station at 11 AM in front of the Dunkin’ Donuts (that’s where the convention center guard is, how apropos).  Leading up to the sale, the buyer asked nearly a dozen questions and I was worried I was dealing with a reseller or someone else who’d rake me over the coals and took the train to Philly to find out.

I met him in his imastudent/hobochick coat and he pulled out the most beat Canon 30D I’d ever seen.  I passed him the lens which he nearly dropped and he commented on how he’d finally have a lens with both caps.  He put the lens on and started taking pictures of the floor.  I asked him if there were any problems and he said “no, but maybe just one.  It doesn’t seem to… focus.”  Normally, I’d be terrified but I’d been so bowled over with is confidence that I politely removed the lens hood covering the focus ring and put the lens into manual focus.  He smiled and passed me the money.  I saw the guard shake his head and it was off to the Reading Terminal to enjoy the fruits of my sale:  five bananas and something unhealthy made by the Amish.

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I’m waiting for someone to buy my Rebel XSi so it’s been sitting on my desk at work and some people have asked to use it but decided not to when I told them it was a DSLR.  Today, someone asked to borrow it who swore up and down he was quite skilled with a DSLR.  When I got it back, the veil of his untruth was thin: The camera was set to “Auto” instead of Aperture Priority, the output format was changed to “JPG” from RAW, the on-camera flash was up and, most damning, the ISO was set to “800”; a region untread, like the area of my car’s tachometer above 4k RPM.  If this is his definition of “being skilled” I’d hate to see him “be skilled” with a nail-gun, microwave, or a manual transmission.

I passed his desk later that day and he thanked me for letting him use my camera.  It was not a chair he sat upon but a throne of lies.

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I found a 5D Mark II for a reasonable price on Ebay and pounced when the seller offered to allow me to pick it up sameday not far from where I worked.  I met him at a gas station and received the camera for six hundred dollars cheaper than the equivalent new in box but with the caveat of no accessories.  How much could replacing the accessories possibly cost? Well, 5 D Mark II batteries are apparently fashioned from the tears of the pope and cost $120 for battery plus charger.  The neck strap is made from the breath of fish, the roots of mountain, and the noise of cat chiming in at $30.  Finally, Compact Flash cards are forged by union dwarves that fashion them with potent runes of storage costing about $130 for 16 GB storage.  Oh, also, the camera’s from Australia so the normal two-year limited warranty and 100k shutter actuation warranty is also void unless I want to remail it from Sydney.  I determined the value of this by checking what a homeowner’s policy rider would cost to cover the same thing.

So how much did I save?  $12!  This final dose of savings was removed by the gas spent driving to the location and the extra money I spent on getting lunch out that day.  Another amazing move like this and I’ll lose a corner from my Personal Management merit badge card.

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I’m a sharpness whore.  A hint of blur can destroy an otherwise fine picture and I refuse to shrink the photo to cover the movement so I sprung for a monopod to improve sharpness without having to use a tripod like a tool.  I entered the camera store and asked to see their collection of monopods.

Sales Associate: Why are you specifically going for a monopod?
Me: I’m doing some shooting at a zoo next weekend and wanted something I could deploy quickly that was small.
Sales Associate: Ok, yeah you really need mobility in a zoo.
*10 minutes of hot monopod testing porn*
Sales Associate: And finally, we have the Manfrotto 682B.
Me: What’s so special about it?
Sales Associate:   It’s a little heavier, and a little pricier, but I think you’ll like this feature *pulls out legs* it’s got three legs for added stability.

Wow… A three-legged monopod.  How did no one think of that before!  I wonder what they’ll think of next, maybe a three-wheeled bicycle.

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I asked my brother for recommendations on a camera stand. He responded that I hadn’t taken enough pictures to justify looking for one. Hm… In the past 10 days I’ve taken 1547. I guess I’m new at this.

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I received my tax refund/payback of interest-free loan to the government direct deposited this morning and within seconds hit “Checkout” on the Amazon shopping cart that held my new camera and lenses.  I chose “free shipping” and “box so my items get here faster” as even individually each item qualified for free shipping.

I checked the order page and saw that I could upgrade the shipping and for a mere $30, did so and sat satisfied knowing I’d get the camera in time for…nothing.  So I changed it back to FREE! and smiled knowing that by just waiting a few more days, I’d have enough extra money for a day of ribs.  But maybe I could split the difference with two day for a mere $10 and still have it in time for…. nothing.  Switched to two-day and then thought of that shipping as the equivalent of a lunch as a discount Chinese food buffet and after some more waffling I changed it back to FREE! and smirked at my bout of financial weakness.

The items shipped and I started compulsively tracking the packages and noticed something, the boxes with the lenses and the boxes with the camera were diverging.  During my waffling, the box with the lenses shipped as 2nd day air while the camera itself didn’t ship until after I went back to FREE! ground shipping.  Looks like I’m going to have a tea party with my lenses on my birthday as that’s about all I’ll be able do.