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Hmmm...

 

Sunday afternoon walk with my son... I slipped and fell over with my M-P... which was largely under my jacket... You should have seen the rest of me! :D

 

Anyway, my M managed to survive...

 

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Anyone else got any camera disasters...? I saw a great one on the Q thread a while back... :)

Edited by Bill Livingston
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Anyone else got any camera disasters...?

I have two -

 

1:  While carrying my Nikon F100 with 300mm f/4 attached to my tripod, I tripped and did a face plant on a fishing dock in Maine.  I was not hurt, but the 300mm lens was converted into two 150mm lenses.

 

2:  A friend's wife picked up my Billingham Hadley Pro which was not buttoned up, resulting in the bag somehow upending thanks to a tangled up strap.  My 50 Summilux sprang out, fell about one meter and did a merry tap dance on a tile floor.  Friend's wife was horrified, I managed to hold back an otherworldly screech of terror.  This lens fared very well compared to the 300mm above - no damage to the Summilux.  At first, I thought this was some sort of miracle but in retrospect I think it was more along the lines of a normal result for a dropped M lens.

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I remember seeing a Canon 300mm f/2.8 EOS lens in a bad way. It had been being used to shoot a surfing championship when the boat it was being used from was swamped. When I saw it, it had been recovered. Unfortunately this was a year later and it was ending its days in the garden of a pension where it was acting as a 'tombstone' - I assume to similar lenses which had been lost at sea. I never photographed it which is a real pity.

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There's a photo of the seriously wrinked top of Larry Burrows' Leica found years later { http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/04/four-photojourn.html } at the crash site in Laos where he and three other PJs died.  It's much uglier than anything I ever expect to see happen to a camera.

 

scott

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I put my camera on a narrow ledge for a self timer picture and while I was posing I watched it tumble and hit a hard rock from 3 ft height. I picked it up and looked for the damage and could not find any (I had 35 FLE on it). I set up for another self timer shot. Later I checked carefully for the damage and there was a nick on the bottom cover and next to "set" button. I am glad it didn't hit the rock lens first. 

 

Of course, there are lessons to be learnt. :)

 

The damage (I touched it up with black paint):

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The selfie after the drop:

Edited by jmahto
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i have had a few camera disasters

 

I dropped the boss's 1Dmk2N and 16-35 - the lens split in two and the front half rolled off down the street.

A young man bumped me in the crowd, and the strap slipped from my shoulder (i think he may have been trying to grab the camera)

 

Had a foreign visitor (a mining minister, i cant remember the country though) and his goons grab my cameras - the flash was torn from one as he swing it round his head by the strap.

both cameras were recovered later without damage, the flash was destroyed though.

 

Had a flash hit by a netball during a portrait shoot, broke the camera hotshoe, and busted the flashtube when the flash hit the ground.

(Have the bits of hotshoe in my display cabinet)

 

Had a 1dmk4 unlock itself from a 400mm lens and fall to the ground, still worked but the AF point markers were all messed up and bunched in one corner of the VF

(Have the mirror box and Pentaprism in my display cabinet)

 

Had a 1Dmk4 permanently attach itself to a 400mm f2.8

Couldnt get the locking pin to retract to take the lens off.

Turns out the locking pin was bent.

(Locking mech and lens bayonet in display case)

 

 

Im sure there is other bits i have forgotten too, but over 7 years there is bound to be some mistakes - we did have a big cardboard box full of "junk" the replaced bits Canon had sent back with our fixed gear.

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Actually thinking about it, my worst camera disaster was watching an underwater housing fill up with water (displaced seal) at about 20m down. The Nikon F801 slowly disappeared before giving off a few bubbles (batteries). It was irreparable inevitably. The 60mm macro lens was deemed repairable but had to go back under repair warranty when it developed crystalline growths some time later - I've always suspected that little was left of the original lens after it was re-repaired. Nikon no longer repair salt water damaged gear these day as far as I'm aware ;) .

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I once had a 50/1 accidentally release from my M6 and take about a 4 ft. drop onto asphalt. This was back in the mid-Eighties when these lenses were appreciably less expensive than today. Even so, I immediately had that stomach in mouth sensation of dread come over me. As I picked up the lens, the only discernable damage was a small nick in the bayonet mount, but I put the lens back on the camera and everything was just fine. Continued to take pictures with it. Focus was still correct as my shots at f/1 were where I had set the focus. I ordered a new bayonet mount and replaced it and you would never know the lens had taken a tumble. I still have the old mount in my Leica parts box. This was the version with the plastic bayonet hood which may have absorbed the blow better than a metal hood would have.

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I had an M4-2 on a tripod that got blown over with a gust of wind.  It fell away from me and I couldn't catch it.  It fell about 5 feet onto some large boulders.  it cracked the body down on the film canister side where the bottom cover attaches, and bent the cover, but it didn't leak light and the bottom cover still worked perfectly.  I sold that camera some years later after continuing to use it without repairs.   That was the same camera that, some years later, went for a roll down a desert sand wash off of the rear rack on a Honda three wheeler at about 30 mph along with three Canon Serenar lenses all in a very early LowePro bag.  I was expecting a bunch of lens-glass dust...  I opened the bag and found no damage to anything at all.  Not only was I relieved, I've been a LowePro user ever since.  The camera and lenses are now long gone, but I still have that LowePro bag. 

 

And then during a shoot, I had an Olympus E-5 with flash and 35-100 f/2 lens take a fall off the deck of a stored ski boat onto the concrete floor of a storage barn where I was shooting.  The spill pulled the lens mount off the lens...  the body and flash suffered no harm at all.  $200 in Olympus repairs later, the outfit was good as new. 

Edited by hepcat
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It's all clean already :)

 

I used a slightly damp thin sponge to wipe the excess mud off and polished it with a dry cloth.

 

There is a little bit of mud in the ridges inside the captive lens hood - I'll have to take it off at some point and clean it thoroughly and clean the lens itself at the same time.

 

No dents or scratches that I can see... There is a little bit of brassing on the body anyway... maybe there is a touch more. It's fine. I can't expect my Leica to be totally without battle scars!

 

There was a dent on the 50 Lux lens hood anyway... I dropped it on the Tarmac in a car park in Brazil earlier in the year... Seems it's not a lens destined to be pristine :)

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