The new glass arrived!, a photo by RichardGHarrison on Flickr.

Last year when I headed off for a few months on the road I stopped in KY and my friend David Toczko (Lone Dakota Photography) insisted that I take his 100-400mm lens along on the journey so I wouldn’t miss any of the long shots so common on trips into the outback. It looked like too much glass to me but I was happy to be proven wrong and will be forever grateful because I was able to address frames that would have been otherwise impossible.

In four days I’m off again and had been haggling with myself over what to replace the 100-400mm with . I had used David’s 70-200mm at a shoot earlier in the year and loved it. So I got the f2.8 version to handle distance and low light and added the 2x extender to double the focal depth. A sort of two in one rig. The only issue I’ve found is that with the extender in place the largest aperture is 5.6 instead of 2.8. On the other hand the smallest is f51! You could do a solar eclipse with that. 🙂

I bought this from B&H Photo in NYC because they are simply the best people to do business with. Unconditional 30 day guarantee on all their stuff and free shipping with most. And (at this writing) no sales tax for shipments to VA.

The only other problem is my camera bag will no longer hold my gear. I’ll check the B&H site tonight but I suspect I’ll go local because I’m running short of time.

Tomorrow I’m off to MacHeaven in Chantilly to swap out my MBP’s 250GB hard drive for a 1 TB. The road draws closer every day now.