To Unimaxium:

darin3200 · Sep 24, 2005

Happy Birthday
:mrgreen:

Meysha · Sep 24, 2005

Happy Birthday mate! Hope it's a good one!!

LittleMan · Sep 24, 2005

Happy B-Day!!! :mrgreen:

doenoe · Sep 24, 2005

Congrats, have a great day

terri · Sep 24, 2005

Happy Birthday!

Hope you get out and enjoy it!

LaFoto · Sep 24, 2005

JonMikal · Sep 24, 2005

have a great day!

Unimaxium · Sep 24, 2005

Yay! I'm so glad you all noticed

Thanks guys :hug::

Wait till I show you all what my birthday present was... it's sweet...

:smileys:

JonMikal · Sep 24, 2005

how long we gots to wait?

Unimaxium · Sep 24, 2005

Until I can find batteries to stick in my digital camera to take pictures of it

Unimaxium · Sep 24, 2005

Ok here's my b-day present:

It's a Tamron 17-35 f2.8-4 lens. Thanks to thebeginning for the recommendation

But pull up a chair and let me tell all you the story of what I went through before getting it.

It all started last week when I bent over to tie my shoe. My 9-month-old canon Elan 7n (along with 50mm 1.8 lens) was hanging on my shoulder, and when I went to elevate my foot on a nearby bench, it swung down, and Thwack! The lens swung straight onto the arm rest of the bench. That caused the lens cap to fall off. But... Oh, wait... that was more than the lens cap... oh crap!

In addition, the exterior lens element (shown on the right) fell out. Oh well, it was a cheap lens anyway. I figure maybe my parents will be willing to buy me a replacement 50mm in addition to my b-day gift (which, btw, I already knew what it was going to be... I had to tell them exactly which lens I wanted because they had no idea).

So fast forward to today. I wake up, I'm all psyched to open my gift and play with my new Tamron lens. So I go to pick the box up, and... wow. This box is really light! The lens must be made out of some superlight spaceage composite material or something. Still excited, I open the box, and this is what I find:

WTF? An empty box? Is this some sick joke? Nope. Amazon.com sure screwed up this time. That's a $500 lens hood sitting there.

So anyway... my family's whole original plan was to head up on a day trip to NYC today, simply because we love Manhattan and 'cause there are so many photo opportunities up there to use to try out my new lens. So we still head up, taking my camera body (sans lens), in hopes that when we get there we can just head to the B&H superstore and buy the lens I was hoping for as well as a replacement for the broken 50mm. And then get a refund from Amazon later. After a nice ride by train, we arrive in Penn Station, walk a couple blocks and notice... B&H is closed!

Turns out they're open Sundays, but not Saturdays (note to self: remember this for TPF NYC meetup). In disappointment, I resolve to make the best of my day in NYC even without my lens. But first we try calling a few more stores to see if they have it in. All the places we try don't have the Tamron, but at least one of 'em had the 50mm. So we get the 50 and some film so at least I'll have something to shoot with.

We continue walking around, enjoying the good weather and the nice photo opportunities. There was this cool breakdancing performance in Washington Square Park. After a few hours of walking, we decide to walk downtown through Chelsea, SoHo, and Tribeca to go to this cool place we had heard about at the South Street Seaport for dinner, before catching a train back home. So as we head through SoHo, I notice this place out of the corner of my eye. It looks like a pretty cool camera store. They have enlargers in the window, and they don't look like your average ritz camera-type or just-film-and-postcards-type place. I figure maybe they have a nice stock of equipment, and hopefully some lenses. We walk in. They're no B&H or Calumet-size store, but there's still a chance they have it. We ask one of the salespeople. She goes over and looks along their wall of lens boxes... and... do they?... yes?... they do? They do! There it is! They have it! W00t! So things are going to turn out well anyway! My parents get it for me, and in the endall works out well. Although I didn't get to shoot a whole lot with it, as it was getting dark and I only had a roll of Velvia 50 in my camera, I at least got to still have my b-day present on my birthday

. So we spent the rest of the afternoon downtown, and then hopped on a train back to Philly. So in the end, I guess everything worked out well.

But still one of us will be giving Amazon a piece of our mind for sending an empty box. We better get a darn good refund.

So for you all, here's another pic of the lens on my camera, taken against a makeshift paper background so that my silly lil' P&S digital could get some decent white balance: