Nice shots. Sounds like you had a good time even if the weather did not cooperate very well. I don't know much about lenses, but you are right, that is ALOT of money for a lens. You look like you do very well without it.

Cheers

When I was kid, did take some photographs.
When CCCP collapse, there was lot of stuff from there on markets with quite unsubstantial price as long it was payed with any another currency that rubles.
I did get this with 500 Finnish mark, converted this day value 110€ ( 136 USD).
It did not have any image stabilization and was manually focused, but s*it what a joy it was reflecting to price...

My friend who was radio amateur, bough military linearamplifier size of 3,6kW (or something) with couple of thousand Finnish marks.

Also bought eye grill with 500 Finnish mark.
It did have this nick name because it did shoot significant amount of gamma radiation directly to eye....
No I did not know it.......

It looks like that Mallard is walking on water.

We put up some big numbers today!
Who is RenegadeBovine? Did someone change there nick-name?

I try summon some camera fever to my self

Old fart memory lane stuff:
Mentioned that use to shoot photographs, but actually did mostly shoot slides [diapicture on local languish -> lat. dia (through)].
My tubes were 28mm to 500mm. I never updated myself to digital era on those matters.
I think most important reason for this was that technology on that time was very brutal and most expensive...
I think thing are different now, might give a change

Well now when mentioned that 500mm lens, some memories about it.
It was absolutely dead piece of mechanism, there was not any intelligence inside of it, but optics where more that enough for my conditions..
Now when I "count" those days, I can actually be sure that there was any more daylight on those times, it was also gray all the time....

My most favorite film was Velvia50, but there was not really any change to use it with that "dark&long" lens.
It did not have any diaphragm at all, it was just 6,3 and 500. So only option work with that piece was change film and shutter time.
With that tube I did usually start with ISO400 and end up to ISO1000, so limiting factor was more graininess of film rather that quality of optics. So it was very fine for most conditions that I face with it.

Tube it self look lot more heavier that it actually is.
If you take a look close enough that picture, there is two mounting for tripod, another on is facing directly down to table.
So I think it originally was something designed to be more part of something solid structure, but did not mind about that.
I was able to take hand held pictures with some seriously challenging conditions.
With this I mean our dog on backyard on foggy winter day.
If I remember right, it was able to focus as close as 6 meter (20 feet) and using ISO1000 film with couple of holes of overlight, I did end us 1/250s shutter time and end up some very nice images without any tripods.
Most limiting factor was actually depth of focus, it literally was just few inch on this range.
Doggys head was barely on focus on all parts, so with this range it was actually more suitable for shooting two dimensions targets.
But on sunny summer days it did have some joy.....

Dug some more closets and actually found another digicam that I receive Xmass present few years ago, I think it was 2008 or something.
Bought some 2700mA rechargeable battery for it today, so I when weather get warmer, try get little a bit more inside of this digigraphy.
Really do not have any idea how this digistuff works.

When I look my old archives, I notice that macro shooting is my cup of tea. So I think that if I get that state of mind, first step to start could be something like this and some hull for it...


Edit: some funny video
http://vimeo.com/34340906