I'm in love.

I recently decided that I needed a little more versatility with my camera and have been pondering investing in a new lens. After Ryan got done having a stroke and picked himself off the floor when I told him the cost, he composed himself and told me to go for it.

I'd read some good things about this li'l ol' lens called a 50mm f/1.8. I was getting super excited about giving it a whirl, and sprinted into the office to dial up amazon.com ASAP. I'm really good at online shopping. Lightening fast

Out of Stock.

Okaaaayy.. dialed up Best Buy.

Out of Stock.

Decided to go to the Nikon website to look for authorized dealers. I found a camera shop listed in Fenton that supposedly had the lens in stock. Now this was even more exciting- I could physically go pick the lens up instead of waiting for the UPS guy to show up a week later like he's Santa Claus.

I tried to temper my excitement though; I was sure when I called to see if they had it they'd give me some lame line like, 'well we suuuure don't have it in stock but we could order it for you!" And then jack up the price a thousand percent. And the store would be dusty. And have like three things on the shelf. And the guy would be a hundred years old and be wearing a sweater vest and bowtie.

I have no idea why these initial thoughts popped into my head.

Anywho, I called the next day during business hours and they HAD IT! Charlotte and I took a trip down and bought our new little friend. The shop was super nice, the people working there were very friendly, knowledgeable and unsweatervested slash unbowtied. They looked like they have a good variety of all kinds of things. The price wasn't bad at all, especially since I didn't have to pay shipping. It was nice to be able to actually talk to someone in person about what I was getting as well; I will definitely go back. For anyone that's interested, the store is called Billmeier Camera Shop and it's located on Leroy Street right in downtown Fenton.

I haven't had a chance to play with it too much, but what I've seen so far is AWESOME.

My old lens is great for a lot of things and produces great pictures when the lighting is decent. But when the lighting isn't so hot... it can be a trainwreck.

This is what my old lens would produce at night, indoors.



This is what my new best friend produces.



I showed this quick test to Ry when he came in from shoveling the driveway and even he was impressed. No easy feat I tell ya. I can't wait to see how it performs in the daylight!

Ok, so now that I've officially nerded out over this I need to go to bed to rest up for some more nerding out tomorrow. A slew of random pictures will follow soon, I'm sure.