Back in 2006 when I toured New Zealand, I stayed in Kaikoura for a few days over winter hoping that the weather would clear up enough for the whale watch cruise ship to be able to go out for whale sightings. It didn’t happen.
Fast forward, oh, 13 years and that chance came out of nowhere. It’s also the really rare time where I deliberately chose the SMC Pentax DA 50-200mm f/4-5.6 lens for “serious” photography. I don’t have any other long lenses, so that made the decision really easy!
As the saying goes… the best camera (or lens) is the one that you have with you at the time. This may be the cheapest store-bought lens that I’ve ever paid for, but it’s taken one of the most memorial-to-me photos I’ve ever taken. Yes, it’s the typical cliché image of a diving whale, but it brought back vivid memories of that trip, which was a Christmas present for me 🙂