A few days ago I saw an adult male deer out by the fence. It’s only the second time I’ve seen a buck, so naturally I grabbed my camera, my telezoom (55-200mm) lens and raced outside.

50% crop. Click for non-resized version.

Sad Trombone. At 1/4000 a second, in full daylight the photo should have been sharp. I started taking photos of various things around me. Anything at focal length 100mm and above started to look blurry. That’s when I remembered the incident of the previous week. After spotting some wild turkeys I had rushed to grab my camera and distance lens. My hand slipped as I was screwing the lens in place. I lost my grip on it and it hit the stone floor hard. Hard enough I was amazed the glass didn’t shatter. I missed my chance at the turkeys, counted my lucky stars that I wasn’t sweeping up glass, and put the lens and camera back.

I don’t think my stars were quite so lucky after all.

The internet seemed to think it was just the focal elements knocked out of alignment. Not great, but not horrible. The lowest price I saw quoted anywhere for Nikon lens repair was about $40 plus shipping. I could save myself the shipping cost by going to a local certified Nikon repair place, but I’ve always found local labor tends to be a bit more expensive than national averages. (One of the perils of a high cost of living area.) I figured $50 was likely the cheapest repair price I could expect to pay.

The lens in question was a 7 year old kit lens that cost $150 new. You can reliably get one used for $100 off e-bay, and sometimes as low as $80. That also meant my lens, in working condition, would be worth at best $100. I was on the fence. After all, I’ve been thinking about a new Telezoom lens since 2014. My 55-200 was certainly serviceable, although not the lens I would have preferred. “Was” being the operative word.

That evening, after the kids were asleep, I decided to take the lens off my camera and have a look at it. A spring had become dislodged. Those things are re-attachable. No biggie. I thought. Except as I was turning the lens over in my hand, the head of the spring fell off! The spring was now in two pieces, and one of those metal pieces was dangerously close to the glass. I got out my trusty tweezers and very carefully removed the free floating metal spring piece. That’s when I noticed another metal piece had snapped and a band had come loose. The repair wasn’t going to be just realigning the elements. There were at least a couple pieces that needed to be replaced, and I couldn’t even be sure that the physical damage I could observe was the extend of it.

At that point I had pretty much decided against repairing the lens. If I did nothing, the longest zoom I had would be the 85mm, which would make some photos much more challenging. I also didn’t really feel like spending the money to replace it. Not the $100 for the same lens when I wasn’t fully content with it’s reach, nor the $500 for the 70-300 which I had been considering replacing it with for the past couple of years. I did find a factory refurbished 70-300 on adorama.com for $350, but that still felt like more money then I should be spending right now. It’s not like I need to be photographing the deer. Domingo’s opinion was to
go ahead and buy the new lens since Photography makes me happy. He spoils me. After a few hours I decided to go back and check on the refurbished lens. Someone else had already snapped it up.

I hate to let emotions dictate shopping decisions, but I was bummed. Really bummed. Even though I hadn’t committed to buying the lens. So bummed I couldn’t sleep that night. At around 3 am I started searching around for more refurbished lenses, eventually finding one on Nikon’s store for $299. Done. (Or rather done in the morning after I managed some sleep and could be sure I wasn’t letting my frustration get the best of me.)

As for the 55-200? Once the new lens arrives I’m going to have some fun taking the old lens apart and getting a better feel for how they work.

Incidentally, this is the second refurbished lens I will own. I highly recommend them if you want more lens but don’t want to spend the money. I prefer refurbished to used. A lens can have minor damage that’s hard to pick up on. If it’s factory refurbished you know you’re getting like-new.