Caveat Emptor

- Otherwise known as ‘let the buyer beware’. This is advice I should have heeded when I went out to buy a second EN-EL3e battery for my Nikon D200. Well, the original Nikon batteries are in short supply, so I decided to try a battery from a third party manufacturer. The package said 1800 mAh, and Nikon original battery’s capacity is rated at only 1500 mAh. Worth a shot, I thought, since it was half the price of the original battery.

For the longest time, it read 100% charge. At around 180 shots, it said 65% of charge remaining. Great, I thought, I’ll be able to get about 400 shots per charge. That’s way better than what I’m getting from my original Nikon battery. I’ll go buy another one. At 194 shots, the battery went flat. 0%.

The moral of the story is ‘if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is’. While I’m probably getting the same number of shots per charge as compared to the original Nikon batteries, I’m not getting a realistic indication of the battery charge remaining. Which brings me to my last quote: ‘You get what you pay for’.

Got To Have More Gear!

I’m still busy unpacking boxes from the move to my new house. And, I’m getting ready to leave for a trip to Tibet at the end of the week. At the same time, I’ve got to go to work. Somehow, I’ve managed to find time to buy myself a used Nikkor 80-400mm VR lens. I don’t know if this was a rash purchase. I’ve had very little use for long glass in the past, but somehow, I feel naked without it. I think I’m getting the ‘Got to Have More Gear’ disease. You know it. It’s the disease where you think more gear will make you a better photographer. I hope that’s not me. After all, the only other thing I need is a 10.5mm fisheye. And then, I’m done…

Wait… Did someone say the D300 was on its way?

Lost, But Not Forgotten

Sorry, I haven’t been updating my blog, as I’ve been busy packing and moving house. I took the opportunity to search for my lost slides – 3 pages of my best selects of Nepal. 60 slides representing 7 trips to Nepal over a period of 14 years. Missing, and probably lost. I haven’t seen them for about 5 years, since the last time I moved. Once in while, I’ll go into a search frenzy and spend a few fruitless hours looking for them. They may have been left with some editor, or been thrown out by mistake, or filed away somewhere ‘very’ safe. I got careless, and as a result, have lost some irreplaceable images and memories of Nepal.

So you think I would have learned my lesson. Not yet. About a year and one week after I got my first Powerbook, the hard drive crashed on me. I had procrastinated buying a backup hard drive and so did not have any back ups. All my photos would have been lost but for the efforts of the technicians at the Apple Service Center. Thankfully, all my photos were recovered.

The moral here is: Backup. Backup. Backup. Slides and negatives can get lost. Hard drives do crash. Memory cards can be corrupted. All I can show you today are these two pictures, shots that were not picked as my best, and are now a reminder of the wonderful shots I have lost.

Photos:
Top: Bodenath Stupa, Nepal. Taken with a Nikon F4, 75-150mm, Fuji Slide film
Middle: Monks Circumnavigating Bodenath Stupa. Taken with a Nikon F4, 24mm, Fuji Slide film.