Had company over the weekend and took them to San Fran Saturday to see the sights. Love everything about that city--except the guy at Camera Empire at 789 Beach St. who preyed on my stupidity and ripped me off. My friend and I were just walking by and the sales clerk happen to espy my Konica Minolta 7D and yelled out that he had a new 600mm lens for me. Being curious, I stopped it. Turns out, all he had was a 2X teleconverter for my 80-300mm zoom lens. I tried it out and didn't like it (or didn't like the price, anyway). But I had been wanting a wide angle lens--the one downside to digital cameras is the small CCDs which multiply the focal length of all your lenses. In my case, all my lenses are multiplied by 1.5x. So just to get a normal 35mm pic, I need a ~19mm lens. So I asked the clerk to show me his Tamron 19-33mm Minolta mount lens. That one I really liked. He had had it marked at $900, but said he'd sell it for $400. To my credit, I wasn't so dumb that I thought he ever sold these things for the sticker price. What I was too naive to realize was that he had marked it up 450%, only to sell it at 1/2 off. It was an impulse buy and I should have know better. The whole time I was in the shop I was thinking how much better I'd feel if I could just go online real quick and compare a few prices. I mean, it's not like I live too far from San Fran. Alas, live and learn.

On the up side, it is a nice lens, and I am loving it. More from the trip later.

Posted by Hey Paul   |   Monday, February 20, 2006