Crash!

lemmy

6

20 May 2012 - 2:20 PM

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Getting ready to put my camera on the tripod for use on a still life, I absent mindedly put it on a leather chair which was tilted. The Panasonic GH2 and attached 25mm Summilux 1.4 lens slid swiftly onto my tiled floor, falling a couple of feet and hitting the floor with a loud crash. The swivel screen, battery and memory card hatches all flew open and the camera bounced and hit the ground again.

S***t, I thought and picked up the equipment to see how bad the damage was. No dents, no scratches. Switch on. Everything lights up including the screen and viewfinder. Lens? Absolutely fine, focuses as normal, focusing ring smooth as ever, auto focus sounds OK....except the VF image won't come sharp when manual focusing. Aha! The force has kncoked the diopter adjustment ring to its limit. Re-set it and....screen focus sharp as normal.

How I got away with it I don't know. It's a sickening moment. I know from experience that one of my old metal Nikon Fs would have sustained at least some dents from such a fall. And I'd have been surprised if the lens had remained undamaged, knowing how sensitive the focusing mechanism and glass can be to shock.

For anyone who still regards plastic construction as inferior to metal, think again

janeez (e2 Member)

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20 May 2012 - 8:03 PM

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A heart stopping moment! Glad to hear all is OK and maybe time to check the insurance policy is up to date?

photofrenzy

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21 May 2012 - 1:32 AM

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Shame the TITANIC wasnt built of plastic eh. Plastic has a bit of give in it so it probably absorbed a bit of the impact, However try to avoid doing it again.

One problem you can have is where metal parts have to screw into plasic mouldings, I remember years ago i had a plastiky canon eos 5, I dropped it from shoulder hight had a 75-300 attatched to it when it bounced off my laminated floor the lens came off thought oh well i will just put it back on.

When i tried to put the lens back on couldnt see the lens mount to attatch the lens to it , It was still attatched to the lens , The metal lens mount was attched to the plasic body with 4 screws and the plasic just sheared off with the metal lens mount so be more careful.