gaffer
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- Andrew Beattie
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As soon as I saw the thread for Skomer 2010, I sent a message to Hypnotic to book a place but the trip was already full.
Skip forward a few months and an a volcano explodes in Iceland. The eruption caused lots of problems, one of which was that Stuart at Lenses for Hire found that lenses got stranded in distant parts of the globe. I sent him a list of my kit and asked "what do you want to borrow?" as a result of which my 16-35 is right now out on hire.
Roll forward to this week. There is a last minute drop-out on the Skomer trip. The only couple pull out, leaving a slot for both of us.
We pay full price for the tickets. Some have pointed out that we could have negotiated harder because no-one else was going to buy them. But that's not the way we roll. We would have happily paid full price in the first place, so it seems wrong to take advantage of someone who is already missing out on their trip
So I drop an email to Stuart - could I be cheeky and borrow the most expensive lens in his shop for the trip? The mighty 400mm f2.8?
Time is short - I order the plate to fit it to my Wimberley in the hope that he says "yes".
Sure enough Stuart is up for it. The next day, we've got the 400, the plate for the Wimberley and we are packing. I nip to the local hardware store to get some pipe lagging for the legs of my Gitso to make it more comfortable to lug around with 7kg of lens and camera.
Drive 200 miles to Skomer
Look in the van. We have packed the pipe lagging but left the tripod at home! The 400 would be essentially unusable without one.
A quick post to the forum and sure enough, MrGubby has a Redsnapper he was planning to leave in the car.
Now, the redsnapper was 100% better than no tripod but the 400 is really too much for it.
But I stumbled across a day trip visitor with a gitso and wimberley, gathered up my courage and asked a complete stranger if I could borrow £1000 worth of tripod for 4 days. He said "yes"!
How cool is that?
Paul from Banbury is, officially a very nice guy.
Andrew
Skip forward a few months and an a volcano explodes in Iceland. The eruption caused lots of problems, one of which was that Stuart at Lenses for Hire found that lenses got stranded in distant parts of the globe. I sent him a list of my kit and asked "what do you want to borrow?" as a result of which my 16-35 is right now out on hire.
Roll forward to this week. There is a last minute drop-out on the Skomer trip. The only couple pull out, leaving a slot for both of us.
We pay full price for the tickets. Some have pointed out that we could have negotiated harder because no-one else was going to buy them. But that's not the way we roll. We would have happily paid full price in the first place, so it seems wrong to take advantage of someone who is already missing out on their trip
So I drop an email to Stuart - could I be cheeky and borrow the most expensive lens in his shop for the trip? The mighty 400mm f2.8?
Time is short - I order the plate to fit it to my Wimberley in the hope that he says "yes".
Sure enough Stuart is up for it. The next day, we've got the 400, the plate for the Wimberley and we are packing. I nip to the local hardware store to get some pipe lagging for the legs of my Gitso to make it more comfortable to lug around with 7kg of lens and camera.
Drive 200 miles to Skomer
Look in the van. We have packed the pipe lagging but left the tripod at home! The 400 would be essentially unusable without one.
A quick post to the forum and sure enough, MrGubby has a Redsnapper he was planning to leave in the car.
Now, the redsnapper was 100% better than no tripod but the 400 is really too much for it.
But I stumbled across a day trip visitor with a gitso and wimberley, gathered up my courage and asked a complete stranger if I could borrow £1000 worth of tripod for 4 days. He said "yes"!
How cool is that?
Paul from Banbury is, officially a very nice guy.
Andrew
