I have coveted this since 2004...

A black BMW M235i parked beside the highway

Pixel - 13/5000 sec, f2 at 467/100mm

A courier arrived at our house twice today. Same courier. Once this morning with a replacement SB-800, bought secondhand from amazon.com for almost no money (and free shipping, delivered in 9 days) to get me back to where I was 12 years ago.

And the second time this arvo with a secondhand Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II Lens. Oof it's lovely though. It has a solid weight in the hand that Canon gear doesn't. It makes a perfectly excellent soft mechanical sound as it focuses. It also focuses so much faster than my other lenses. And it has a bewdy soft click as the vibration reduction mechanics step into action when a I half press the shutter button.

I can't wait to shoot with it tomorrow. Me and Gabba have the day off to go have lunch at Mud Brick on Waiheke. The daughters bought Gabba a voucher for mother's day last year. Eating and drinking to be done.

But back to the lens... I wanted, longed for, this exact lens when I bought my D70 back in 2004, it was way beyond my means then. For the years that I was photoblogging regularly I longingly looked at it online but never got to the purchase stage. Until the weekend when I was out taking photos and swapped between my 18-70mm and my older (from 1996) 80-200mm about 5 times. Which wasn't much fun. So I thought bugger it, hunted online and found the lens I've always wanted second hand and bought it.

Now that I have the camera, lens and speedlight that I dreamed of back in 2004 I'm good to get out shooting again. Darren made a very good point the other day that my Google Pixel 5 probably has a better camera on it than my 2004 vintage D70. It certainly has the software on board that effortlessly beats any workflow from a DLSR with dream lens, ace new PC and software galore.

The photo

Taken with my phone, on the Lewis Pass Road, edited entirely in the phone, on that tiny screen, in about 45 seconds. We were on our way to Maruia Springs during our 2019 trip of the upper right side of Te Waipounamu.

Although, checkout the EXIF data from the phone. Hopeless.