A Broken Lens

I love when it is raining lightly and there is snow on the ground - the result is a low layer of fog maybe only 50 feet thick.  It is such a beautiful thing to see among trees where the ones in the distance begin to fade in the fog.  So that's the story of this photograph.  But let me tell you about the lens I used today.  A friend of mind was doing some night sky photography up in the Catskills.  A runner without a headlamp on at night, ran into her tripod, which had her camera and a wide angle lens on it.  The camera and lens smashed into the concrete.  It cost $600 to fix the camera. The lens, which was worth $1,400, had broken in two pieces and would have cost $900 to repair, so it was totaled.    So six months later I asked my friend if I could take the pieces and see if I could do anything with them, and so she said "sure, it's no good as it is."  I spent days looking at the pieces and thinking about the possibilities.  I thought I might have only a 25% to 50% chance of fixing it because it is an all electronic lens - nothing is mechanical.  The lens is filled with circuit boards and ribbon cables.  So at a friend's recommendation I bought some special industrial epoxy and then did some gluing.  Then I spent a week contemplating what was next.  Then I spent yesterday and today putting the lens back together and then taking it apart again! It worked, but it didn't focus!  So I took the lens apart and tried a few things that didn't work then put it together again.  The short version is, that I was finished with the repair after sunset tonight, and I raced out of the house, and over to this park to take some photographs of the trees in the fog.  This is the first photograph with the lens I repaired.  I am stunned that I was able to make this lens work again!