Falling Off the Wagon!

Well; I did it. Went off the spending diet and bought something....well actually, four somethings! I've been researching a few items for some time. Two of them have been a backup camera and a general purpose lens that can also serve as"portrait" zoom . Last week, I found them.....both of them, all in one package.....kind of..... Anyway, there was an eBay listing from Portland, Oregon that had a Nikon 18-70mm/f3.5-4.5 lens that I've been wanting combined with a D70s camera that it was originally "kitted" with; listed for $150 BIN (Buy It Now). The lens alone has been selling for more than that on a regular basis. I know; I've been tracking them. The "fly in the ointment" was that the camera has a hot pixel, which shows up in red (at times) and leaves a bit of a trail (tiny red line extending down from it). The facts on this situation (other than the worth of the lens), is that completely non-working D70/D70s' often sell for nearly $100! So the gears started turning in my head. What if I added an inexpensive working lens and packaged it together as a system with a glitch? The probability is that it would sell for what I had in the whole she-bang....thus making the lens, free (or close to it)! So, I started looking.for a lens. 5 minutes later I came up with a Tamron 28-80mm lens selling for $27 (BIN, shipping included), and in the same search I found an Tamron 28-200mm lens with an auto-focusing issue for $15.50. Then I bought a 67mm Nikon NC filter for the new lens and I had well and truly fallen off the wagon and gotten run over by it!
OK, I'm exaggerating a little bit, since the facts are the I spent around $220 for, 1 camera, 3 lenses, and 1 filter. However when I came home yesterday from an all-day certification training (that was just a poke in the eye), it all looked much worse than it was since all 4 boxes had shown up at the same time and were piled up in the hallway!
So now, on to my rationale (or rationalization). No! It's not because that guy is threatening to break my face! For those who don't recognize him, he's Mike Holmes, the "Make It Right" guy and has several TV shows on HGTV. I love his show and on it, he's often seen shooting pictures of things done wrong as he inspects the houses. Although, the camera he uses is the devil's own, Canon, he has a short zoom mounted on it which is probably just the 18-55 kit lens that's sold with the camera. As i watched him use it on a weekly basis, it struck me as being very very slick handling and balanced for inside use. The converted focal length would be equivalent to about a 28-85mm on a 35mm camera. Although my 18-200mm super-zoom covers all that, it get a little heavy and unwieldy when you just need to grab a quick shot of the kids and/or the animals.
And this is something I really don't need. Kinda like getting out the shotgun to deal with a mouse in the house. Don't get me wrong, it's a great lens and the center of my arsenal, but just not the best for what I need most of the time. I've had this in the back of my mind for a long time. Of course there is the cheap 18-55mm kit lens that Nikon started selling with the introduction of the D50 which is really a pretty good performer, but with a Nikon conversion factor of 1.5x (vs. Canon's 1.6x), it only goes 27-82mm which is a little short of the other job I had for it.....a portrait lens.

Enter the Nikon 18-70mm/f3.5-4.5. This lens came into being as a "kit" lens as well, but one with a twist. It had "mid-line" build and optical quality! At a 35mm converted focal length of 27- 105mm, it's not only a great "grab the shot", quick-handling lens, but a nice portrait lens as well. Plus it has the added benefit of having a slightly brighter and shallower depth of field f4.5 at the long end vs. the 18-200mm which is already f5.6 at that focal lenght. It's not "VR" like the 18-200, but if you can't hold 105mm steady, you have no business shooting a DSLR!

As you can see, it doesn't extend anywhere near the length of the 18-200mm! As I've already confirmed as soon as I put it on the camera, the balance and handling of my D300 has completely changed.

It doesn't even tip over when I have the MB-D10 battery grip attached, lifting the whole assembly 1.5-2 inches higher. The construction of this lens is also very impressive as you can see by the Nikon diagram below.
Here's a comparison picture so you can get a better sense of the difference between the two lenses.

This lens really is a very good deal even if I had paid the full-pop $150-170 that they sell for. Instead of the VERY plasticy feel of the 18-55mm, you get much better construction with a steel mounting plate. Although that isn't a deal breaker for me, I don't like my primary lenses that I intend on using a lot to be built that way. The price is disproportionately low due to the fact that there are so many of them out there since they were often included in a "kit" with the D70, D70s, D80 and even the D200. In my case, I got the lens for a good price, plus got the D70s essentailly thrown in for free!

Now, if I can get what I hope for out of the D70s (with a hot pixel) and the Tamron lenses, I might even end up with a profit on my hands and possibly partially paying for my true target for a backup camera. The lighter and more compact, D50!