Nikon Repair of my 24-70 Lens (NOT)

....  as many of you know I killed my Nikon D700 and Nikkor 24-70mm lens a month or two ago while at the races.  I slipped on some (unseen) ice and went down very hard.  The aforementioned hardware went down even harder and basically got banged up pretty bad.  ( the lens was actually snapped in two...  )

Readers digest:  I created a little gallery for visual purposes and had some of the Nikon repair guys look at it to see if they could tell me if it was repairable or just a big heavy paperweight.  They indicated the former (fixable) and recommended that I send it in.  Today I get notification from the repair facility that it CANNOT be (economically) fixed and that it will cost more to fix it than it would be for me to purchase a refurb'd unit.

{sigh}  Feeling like I was led on . . . .   :(  I was give a $650'ish dollar figure to fix.  I'm told a refurb will run me $1400. 

Grrrrrr .....    not entirely happy.

The body is fixable ( I guess ...  I haven't heard any change of mind from them with that - yet ).

{another sigh}

The top of Crow Hill Rd. near Munnsville, NY.

In the meantime -- I grabbed the shot above this morning on my way into work and just quick post processed it on my laptop here at work.  I don't have photoshop installed on this thing but I do have lightroom.  It is an 8 frame pano (handheld / vertical).  I exported the raw files out to .jpg's, and then brought them into the freeware Hugin software to generate the pano.  It's not bad ...  the one propeller on the right hand side didn't line up very well but ...  for not spending any time on it and, again, free software.

I'll likely re-do it, clean it up with photoshop when I get home tonight where I can use layers to fix things if need be.

Nikon D300, Nikkor 35mm lens

Snow days

....  really?

So I'm headed into work this morning and from about Georgetown on up to Vernon the drive got to be really interesting at times.  ( whiteouts, snow blowing across the road off of open fields, and just the fact that it was snowing like all hell...  )

I'm hearing on the radio that this school district in on a 2 hour delay, some other one is closed, another one on a one hour delay, etc ....   I look at the clock on the dashboard and note the time.  Knowing where I am, and about how long it will likely take me to get to where I would like to be ....  I stop and slap on my little 35mm fixed focal length lens (still waiting on my 24-70 to come back in from repair).  This 35mm will give me an approximate view of roughly 50mm on my old D300 so that should be pretty good for what I have in mind.

I've gotten to "know" these Amish kids that I see nearly every morning when I take this particular route into work.  I wave to them, they always smile and wave back.  I figure they must be headed off to school.  There are usually 3 or 4 of them in the little buggy that they drive and they come through nearly like clockwork at this particular junction of my drive.  I have never taken any photo's of them - the Amish aren't really keen on that - but I had to make an exception for this morning.  Hopefully they won't hold it against me for having done so.

So while all of us "English" are whining about the bad conditions, snowy roads, epic cold and the schools all canceling and or running on delay ...   consider that these kids, in an open buggy no less, head off every morning to where ever it is that I see them going weather be damned.

Something About the Sky This Afternoon

....  it was blue.  And there was a bright "thing" shining from within the blue.

That bright thing was steadily descending towards the horizon though and turning into an orange'ish color which did cast some neat shadows and created some nice light.

It was (is) COLD out - my hands were nearly numb after just but a few minutes out of the car grabbing these pic's....   think the guy on the radio said it was 3* at the time.  The wind chill far below that ...

Welsh Church Rd. in Erieville, NY.

Automatic Tranny

So get this - shortly after I got to work this morning I discovered a bunch of boxes that had been left for me from Friday deliveries (UPS and FedEx).  I unbox stuff and set it in various little piles (this goes here, these things have to go over to the plant, this thing for the new guy, etc... )  I break down the cardboard and proceed to take it out to the garage where we have a dumpster for recycling and I see this:

I was like "Whoa.... !  What is THIS thing... ?!   Damn Sam...  this is cool....  "

I dumped the cardboard into the bin and went and grabbed me camera.  :)

It is apparently going to be hanging around our facility for a week or so as the company is testing it to see if it is something they may consider investing in.  Get this - big honkin' 18 wheeler truck like this - it's an automatic tranny!  lol!  Yeah ....  

The wrap job / paint job on it?  Apparently this was THE truck used to haul the Christmas tree to the White House this past year - that's pretty neat.  I'm hoping to get some better shots of it later on this week, and maybe I'll try to get some more lose ups / detail shots of the paint job / wrap on it.  It really is quite cool.

Click on the pictures to view them larger.

Early evening in Cazenovia, NY

I had to stop at a bank to get some cash from an ATM. I happen to know that one of the offices of the bank that I use is in Cazenovia - so I went that way on my way home after work. It had been a damp, drizzly day and I had hoped that the ground would have been a little wetter than it was (would have made for cooler, more colorful reflections I'm thinking but ... ). I got my cash from the ATM and then pulled the camera & tripod out of the car and setup right there on the sidewalk and captured this.


As my D700 body and 24-70mm lens are both out of commission at present and at the Nikon repair facility in Melville, NY I'm now using my trusty old backup D300 body and a handful of little fixed focal length lenses (24, 28, 35mm's mostly)  I grabbed this with the 24 @iso 320 and bracket it with 7 frames.  (HDR)  The longest exposure of the bracket was 8 seconds.  What is kind of cool though is that with really long exposures, the people that were walking though the scene - they just disappear.  I'm not honestly quite sure how that works - but it's just cool.  :)
So anyway -- imported into Lightroom, blended together using enfuse and then tweaked / cleaned up some in photoshop.