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Thought it might be interesting to get peoples feedback on just how good cameras and lenses are :
Have you ever dropped or broken any camera equipment what was it and how was it affected ?
Mine ( over a period of 10 years i may add )
Canon EF 50mm 1.4 - rolled off a table during wedding - smashed to bits and zoom wouldnt work any more
Canon EF 50mm 1.4 knocked in camera bag - focussing turned eratic and had to bin it
Canon 17-40 L Dropped at a wedding and hit concrete - lens and working absolutely perfect , plastic ring broke from inside front but was held in by filter so no problem
Canon 5dmk2 - bounced 40 foot down a cliff with me attached - result small graze to camera and large grazes to me - camera survived fine
Canon 70-200 F4 L- dropped out of bag at a wedding - smashed hood , lens still fine but close focus not performing properly
Two Gizzos screen protectors cracked so far
One Giotto Tripod stiff and unusable after numerous trips to Dunstanburgh !
Canon 24-105 L sand in the focusing mechanism
Canon 580ex2 Flash - had to have internals replace under guarantee as stopped firing correctly
All in all after going on 300,000 shutter firings over the lenses and two bodies not a bad rate , weddings can be a bit cruel to your kit sometimes 
Car rolled on top of me, camera survived but I got a few broken bones 
Fell into 12 feet of water, both submerged and both survived
Many years ago ( c 1989 ) I fell over on the foreshore at a local tourist site, Birling Gap near Beachy Head and my Olympus OM40 had a rinse in sea water 
It was a Saturday but managed to find a fairly local repairer by early afternoon and they managed to save the camera & lens
Claimed on my insurance and the only assurance ( signed statement on the claim form ) I had to give the Company was that I was NOT undertaking underwater photography.
Yip got to agree re the Zenith E.Mine came off the back of me bike on the M4 and ended up in the central reservation the back plate was bent so I straightened it a bit of gaff tape over the back and it was as good as new my mates christened it Chenobyl the Great Russian Disaster!!
I once left an old OLympus trip in a field.
Went back a couple of days later to find the field had been ploughed.
After a search I found it half buried in mud, I never found the lens cap but it was still working, I still use it to this day with its dents and dings
In my very brief time using a Canon kit, i successfully destroyed two lenses, a body and grip all at the same time.
I had been hill walking and had stopped at a ridge to take some pics of the peaks through the mists. I grabbed a drink and then swung the backpack onto my shoulder. It was the sudden shift of weight that alerted me to the fact that something wasnt quite right.
Yes, there below me smashed on the rocks at the bottom of the ridge was the contents of my backpack that i'd obviously forgotten to zip up!
Fortunately it wasnt an expensive kit as i had bought it as a stand in (intending to sell it on) until the insurance came through on my Nikon kit that had been stolen from the car a few weeks earlier! Oops!
Never used Canon since, haha!
dropped a Canon G9 onto kitchen floor from about 1 metre (switched off and lens retracted) but on power-up the lens refused to retract again...already have lenses, underwater housing, spare batteries etc. so was reluctant to scrap - but Canon repair was quoted at least £150...
finally, a year later, got a replacement from E-bay, in immaculate nick, better than mine, along with leather case, more batteries and an extra (superfluous but what the heck..) lens...for the same price...E-Bay does work sometimes...!
oh...and have driven away from N.E.C. carpark having left tripod on the roof...was a rubbish one anyway....
Never really damaged my gear, but i do often forget to take things home with me when out and about, usually the tripod.
My old manfrotto had an old video pan/tilt head, sometimes the handle would get in the way when photographing fungi, more than once have i absent mindedly left the handle and screw behind in some woods, even after 4 days i would find them easily, often trodden into the muddy ground.
Once left the entire tripod in long grass at upwood, went back next day expecting it to be gone, nope, still there, the fecker is too heavy to steal i guess 
Quote: Once left the entire tripod in long grass at upwood, went back next day expecting it to be gone, nope, still there, the fecker is too heavy to steal i guess
Nah.. just that your viewpoint was out of kilter with other photographer's views so they never stumbled on it....!
I broke two canon 50/1.8, both by letting the side of the barrel whack on something, so it pops apart.
Now I have a Contax 50/1.4. If that whacks on something, it's most likely the something will break.
I also dropped a 200/2.8L from it's pouch - it wasn't zipped up properly, and I was happily hoisting it into the car when it just tipped out.
It landed front down on a rock
The filter took most of the impact, but it was jammed on solid. I had to pay a repair man to get it off.
When I collected, the girl on the counter told me it hadn't been easy, there was a lot of swearing in the workshop that day.
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