Some family friends asked me to take pictures at their/our Thanksgiving dinner.  I obliged even though the idea of walking around taking pics of people did not interest me in the least.

No one wanted their picture taken and they all gave me a hard time, so with that, I quit taking pics. Easier to not take pics than take pics so I’m all for the easy way out.

I did however see one awesome picture that needed to be made, so I went outside to take the picture.  Around that time my dad asked me to open the gate for him.  I sat my camera down on the shelf of a gas grill and went to the gate.

Crash, bam, boom.  My Nikon D80 along with 18-135mm Nikon lens crashed to the ground and broke into pieces.

Devastated doesn’t begin to describe what was going through my mind at the moment.

Anyways, I brought the pieces to Houston Camera Exchange.  They kindly sent me to a camera repair shop.  They fixed what was wrong with the camera, though one button doesn’t work… going to see if Columbia Camera can fix that for less than the $280 they suggested it would cost.

The lens is dead.

So I was stuck.  Buy a new lens or pay $450 to get mine fixed.

A new Nikon lens is $800.  That’s more than I could really spend at this juncture haha.  Houston Camera Exchange recommended the Sigma 18-200mm f3.5-6.3 DC OS.

Turns out it is a better lens than what I used to have and better than the Nikon 18-200 VR ED DX 3.5/5.6 in overall contrast, sharpness etc etc.

So I ordered the Sigma and it should arrive Tuesday from Amazon.com for $360 which is $400 off the retail price!

Then tonight I checked out the Epson store on a whim and saw they were selling the Epson Stylus Photo R280 printer for $29!

That is a steal, it was originally $110 more than that.

I bought that too.  It might not be available anymore, it was supposed to be a Black Friday deal but as of a few minutes ago, it was still online.

It, according to This Week in Photography (aka TWiP), the Epson R280 is a

8.5? wide printer [that] makes gallery-quality prints rated for over 80 years (under glass) on many different papers.

They went on to talk about how incredible the inks were (nearly as good as the K3 pigment based inks), how fast it was and that it was the best in its category.

For me this will be my proofing printer.  No need to use my expensive K3 inks from my Epson Stylus Pro 3800 to make simple 8×10’s for my professor to quickly browse through.

So, while it sucked hurting my camera and killing my lens, I got some great deals today and will actually, maybe and hopefully be able to take it up a notch.  Especially with this new lens, my first with a vibration assist, supposedly good for 4 f-stops!  Awesome.

Oh, and in other news, I sold a picture today!  This one, the House on Pacquin.

Now I must go to bed.  I’ll make a post covering my Thanksgiving break soon.  Right now I need to get some sleep before my flight in the morning!