I'd like to take the time to warn anyone who bothers to stumble across this.

cheap gear can cost you. I almost had a near death encounter with my camera, the brief story follows.

Like most of you, I carry my camera everywhere. It's attached to me and my friends and family have gotten used to seeing it in my hands, hell, at my local college I'm "that guy with the camera." But I digress, I was driving home from work on an extremely windy night and I noticed the moon. She looked like a gigantic orange slice hanging in the sky, taunting me.

I took the bait. I set everything up and started a long exposure. Not wanting to stand in the wind, I sat in my car and watched my camera in the dim ambient sky light as the wind raged outside. Then I watched one of the legs fail and the wind knock her over.

She's okay.

the first thing I did after cleaning her profusely was order a heavy duty tripod.

I have not looked back.