The M disasters - what was the worst thing that happened to your M lens?

[Al Brown]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

Tell us about your M lens disasters.
It is painful even to think about something happening to those precious little gems, let alone experiencing it.
What was the worst that happened to your M lens?

For me, it was water droplets between elements in my Noctilux 0.95 from a job in Southeast Asia. And I am not counting the french kiss with concrete floor of my 28/2.8 III Mandler Elmarit in Afghanistan.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[justj]

One frozen to death in Arctic, one jump to it's death in Maldives and one smash into pieces in Thailand. 

[Advertisement]

The Leica Q3 is available for pre-order at B&H Photo Video and Adorama

[Rennrocky]

Bought a Noctilux 1.2 and lost it two hours later in a pub in El Arenal

[Al Brown]

7 minutes ago, Rennrocky said:

Bought a Noctilux 1.2 and lost it two hours later in a pub in El Arenal

This send shivers down my spine

[Raymondl]

59 minutes ago, Al Brown said:

For me, it was water droplets between elements in my Noctilux 0.95 from a job in Southeast Asia. And I am not counting the french kiss with concrete floor of my 28/2.8 III Mandler Elmarit in Afghanistan.

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Oh wow that’s so sad... was it raining quite heavy when you were shooting with the Noc 0.95 ? Just curious to how the water droplets got in there... 

[NigelG]

32 minutes ago, Rennrocky said:

Bought a Noctilux 1.2 and lost it two hours later in a pub in El Arenal

We already have a winner! 😀

I dropped a 50Lux ASPH onto a cobbled street in Stockholm and as I bent down to pick it up I manage to kick it further along the road....🙄

[LocalHero1953]

Advertisement (gone after registration)

I threw my Apo-Summicron-M 90 ASPH onto the cobbles outside Parma Cathedral*. It didn't shatter, just bounced. Focus ring locked solid - rebuilt by Leica for a modest fee.

 

*memo to self: always fasten your bag shut before picking it up.

[wlaidlaw]

I had a very lucky escape, the notorious self-detaching front section of my 28 ASPH Summicron came completely unscrewed but dropped onto my foot and amazingly stayed balanced on the top of my shoe, from where I got my wife to pick it up, while I froze and held my breath. In the hands of the previous owner, someone has tried with an incorrect tool to tighten the tiny (1.7mm?) retaining grub screws which prevent the front from unscrewing and chewed two of them up beyond further tightening. After screwing the front section back in again, this just left one screw that could be tightened, to prevent the front from rotating and falling off again I did this with one of my set of Swiss A+F jeweller's screwdrivers but the front section is not very secure.

I keep meaning to send the lens away to have the two damaged screws removed plus the third less damaged one, then the holes drilled and re-tapped to 2.5mm. I would then get hex socket grub screws put in, so that they could be properly tightened without the risk of damage. 

Wilson

[Al Brown]

4 hours ago, Raymondl said:

Oh wow that’s so sad... was it raining quite heavy when you were shooting with the Noc 0.95 ? Just curious to how the water droplets got in there... 

@Raymondl no rain, no spray. Just the ultra wet climate of the Outer Indonesian Islands.

[spydrxx]

It was a freezing rain. With a gloved hand I temporarily set my M4 with a 50 Summicron on the hood of my car while I bent over to tie a shoelace which had become undone. I looked up to see the camera sliding off, crashing onto the concrete pavement below. When I picked it up, the lens focusing mechanism wouldn't budge, and the camera wouldn't wind. Sent the lens to DAG and the body to Sherry Krauter. In a couple of weeks everything came back working as smoothly as new...but my pocketbook was much lighter.

[astrostl]

I dropped my 21/3.4 SEM right onto the limestone floor at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem while changing lenses. Got hotel maintenance to loan me pliers and a flathead, which I used to pry back the flange and reopen the casing around the rear element enough to get the thing to mount. The focus ring has a resulting rough spot for turning, but the optics are fine. That was over the holidays, and I still need to send it in for service

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

[Al Brown]

10 hours ago, Al Brown said:

This sends shivers down my spine

 

[colint544]

Swapping lenses on my M Monochrom on the beach at Sopot, Poland and dropped my uncapped 28mm Summicron ASPH. It landed in the sand, mount side down. Botton third of the lens was buried.

I retrieved it gingerly, tried carefully removing all the grains of sand, but soon realised it was a lost cause. The sand was pushed deep into the cavity, incorporated into the oil in the threads. It was a lost cause.

One upside about the lens's subsequent trip back to Wetzlar was that they were able to fix the tiny screws at the front of the barrel which always came loose. So it wasn't all bad.

[jdlaing]

7 hours ago, astrostl said:

I dropped my 21/3.4 SEM right onto the limestone floor at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem while changing lenses. Got hotel maintenance to loan me pliers and a flathead, which I used to pry back the flange and reopen the casing around the rear element enough to get the thing to mount. The focus ring has a resulting rough spot for turning, but the optics are fine. That was over the holidays, and I still need to send it in for service

Welcome, dear visitor! As registered member you'd see an image here…

Simply register for free here – We are always happy to welcome new members!

Ouch.

[cboy]

Very sad moments when reading everyone's posts...When changing lens in Queenstown NZ i dropped my 50/f2  onto rocks; fell down filter first and filter shattered,  its shards damaged front element. Whilst cosmetically the front element looked like a meteor shower had hit it, image wise i didn't see any adverse affect to image. lol My next 50/2 dropped again and lens hood was bent, but after Leica repaired it better than it was lol

 

[derleicaman]

Mine came with my Noctilux 1.0 at a local Oktoberfest years ago. I was taking a group photo of family and friends with my M6, and while focusing, the lens rotated off the mount and fell to the asphalt! I was stunned, and when I picked the lens up, the only damage was to the mount. Do you think drinking had anything to do with it? 🙂

Called Leica in New Jersey the next day and had a new mount sent out. Put it on in 5 minutes and it was good as new. Sold the lens years ago, but I still have the old mount as a souvenir.

[Al Brown]

I know for sure that there is one Noctilux 1.0 at the bottom of the Grand Canal in Venice. My buddy, a well known business owner & camera dealer from the US East Coast, dropped it in by accident. It was silver.

[Pyrogallol]

Would be an intriguing story if he had dropped it in on purpose!

I still remember, when I was about 10 years old, 1959, on a family holiday in London at The Tower of London, seeing a man lose the lens off his camera over the wall of the Embankment into the river Thames. No idea what camera it was, but I still remember it all these years later.

Edited November 19, 2020 by Pyrogallol

[farnz]

2 hours ago, Al Brown said:

I know for sure that there is one Noctilux 1.0 at the bottom of the Grand Canal in Venice. My buddy, a well known business owner & camera dealer from the US East Coast, dropped it in by accident. It was silver.

Wow - I wasn't aware that Leica had ever made a silver 50/1 Noctilux!  It's something I would dearly have loved to own so your buddy must have paid a high price for it and his loss is all the greater.

Pete.

[Advertisement]

Hallo,

Look here: Leica M

[farnz]

The worst I've had was at the edge the of the St Lawrence river well north-west of Quebec when I was changing lenses 'on the fly'. I was holding my M8 in the palm of my left hand my and 90/2 APO-Summicron asph in the fingers of my left hand and uncoupling my 28/2.8 Elmarit asph with my right hand.  The Summicron managed to wriggle free from my fingers and fell into a fencing wire and boulder breakwater in front of me.  It bounced from rock to rock and settled 5 or 6 feet down.  It could see it but there was no way I could reach it so presumably it's still there 12 years later.

Pete.