First time playing, and I didn't know what numbers to pick, so I 'quick pick'ed them all.

So the Powerball is at like $660 million dollars. So I took a road trip and bought some lottery tickets.

It was a fun time with my bandmate, Wendy. We had both never played the lottery, and figured the cost of a meal was ample enough of an expenditure to place betting on something so statistically impossible we could only equate buying the lottery tickets as pure entertainment anyway.

However, it was getting back to the house where things got interesting.

As I stepped out of the car and put my camera bag on, I heard a thud, a crack - and I knew what happened. Something had fallen out of my bag. What was it? My 24mm f1.4L lens was laying on the ground, tiny speckles of glass shimmered in the light, and there was a big gaping hole in the lens.

An almost Zen-like cloud descended on my brain: "I'm not attached to my lens. It's my favorite lens, but it's just one more thing."

I sighed, picked it up, wondering at the big hole...

But that's also when I realized, "Hey, wait a minute. The lens is fine. That's the lens filter that smashed up, and as long as those glass shards didn't scratch the front lens element, we should be back in business!!!"

And, after using a rubber band to get a better handle on the now death grip clutch of the Tiffen 77mm UV filter hammered into the front of my lens, I unscrewed the filter, used a lens brush to try to knock free the small glass particles still on the front lens element, plugged it into my camera, and it still worked.

$2,000 lens saved by $20 filter.

I'll take that any day I can get it.

For the record, I'm pretty meticulous (perhaps "anal" is a better word) about keeping my gear in good shape, but I never thought I would have needed a lens filter to save my lens.

Thank you, Tiffen!

Got a question about what filters do, and what they are good for. So I thought I would post my response to him and the link I gave him; maybe it will be useful for you!

WHY DO I GET CRUSHED OUT COLORS IN THE SKY, AND WHEN I ADJUST FOR THAT, THE SUBJECT IS TOO DARK. DO I NEED A FILTER FOR THIS? IS A UV FILTER WHAT WILL WORK???

From my understanding, let's say there is a scale from 0 to 100, where zero is black and 100 is white, and the scale moves dependent on whatever is your brightest element. Just like if you are staring at the sun, you can't see everything else. The blow out on the highlights occurs because of your uneven lighting; which is what happens in natural light, during peak daylight (usually around noon-3 is the brightest). The brighter your brightest element, and the more focused you are on it, the less you'll see and get detail in elements that are darker. If you concentrate your image on the dark places, then the highlights will be blown out and there will be no detail in them.

SO, either shoot NOT during peak daylight, choose a time closer to dawn or dusk, to get more even lighting, or you enter the world of filters and (if you are still photographer you shoot RAW format or shoot multiple images of the same but at different exposures) post-production and processing.

This page has some good info that might help regarding filters. I did a cursory scan, and it seemed legit to me, and will save everyone posting a tid bit here and there.

cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/camera-lens-filters.htm

Cheers.