A Day of Goodies

It's fun ordering stuff online.  You get to do research about the items, read their reviews, compare store prices, and all sorts of related stuff.  It's also cheaper than shopping local stores in most cases.  Sometimes the items aren't available locally at all.  Sometimes they are available locally, but you're in no hurry and would rather avoid the traffic hassles and have them delivered right into your hands.  Sometimes it's a juggle between no sales tax or free shipping that sways the purchase in your favor.

I think my favorite part is arrival.  Most people I talk to feel the same sort of excitement.  You get a tracking number and get to follow it's trip to your doorstep.  Obviously, it's not the same with everything you would order--Say, a replacement supply item.  But for something new it can get exciting anticipating its arrival.

Yesterday was a "2-fer" type of shopping day.  Two items I ordered came in on the same day.  One was my new camera bag.  I needed a new bag pretty badly.  Not only had I sort of outgrown my old camera bag, it was in pretty bad shape.  Remember, it had gone through a traumatic experience (as did I) when it fell off the Harley one day during a ride.  Lately it had gotten to the point where the top zipper (the most important one) was coming undone.  You can't really repair zippers like that.  Luckily, it had two zipper pulls so I could zip it most of the way from either end, stopping just short of the bad spot.  Yesterday my new Ape Case (yes, that's it's brand name) came.  Pretty nice bag!  Lots of space and easily customizable to fit my stuff.

The other item was the best though:  A new lens!

I wanted a good "walk-around" lens to replace the lens that was originally shipped with my camera when it was new.  I liked the range, but not the optics.  It was never really crisp and clean in my opinion.  I lovingly referred to it as my "plastic lens" whenever we would discuss it at home.  My research led me to a Sigma brand lens.  Instead of 18-55mm of zoom range, I now have 17-70mm.  That lets me zoom just a little farther.  It also has excellent macro capabilities.

It was very hard to track down this lens though.  Apparently right when I was ready to buy they had pretty much been discontinued everywhere and I couldn't find one to save my life.  I could find their replacement model, but it was $100 more because it had an "anti-shake" stability feature built into it.  Imagine my surprise when my new lens showed up yesterday and it was the new stabilized version!  I don't think they knew they shipped me the better one at the older one's price, but they did.

Nice score!