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06-23-2019, 08:41 AM - 3 Likes   #1
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Finding stuff. How lucky are you?

I'm on the way home from a holiday in London, Le Mans and Paris, and a couple of incidents got me thinking.

While at Le Mans, at the crowded race circuit during the 24 Hour WEC race, I noticed my GR III had lost its notoriously loose lens bayonet cover. Although I wasn't particularly panicked about it, I back-tracked my steps and found it on the ground near the entrance to the Ford Team catering area.

Two days ago, walking back from the Louvre, I reached down to keep my hand on my KP and beloved FA77 to discover by feel that the lens cap wasn't there. I usually take the cap off when I'm carrying any lens, trusting the hood to protect the front element, but I know that I had not done this on this occasion. My wife was not too happy about back-tracking this time, as she felt my chances were slim and it was getting late. The streets were even more packed than a normal Friday evening in Paris as it was World Music day. But this lens is My Precious, and I would not be gainsaid.

We battled our way back to the very table where we had dinner (and mounted the lens on the camera), but alas, no cap was found. Distraught, I agreed to give it up as lost and we headed back towards our hotel. Only 20 metres or so from the restaurant of disappointment I saw a circle of green felt (surround by a thin ring of silver) in the gap between the cobblestones. It had survived unscathed and the world was right again!

Thinking back, I have lost three lens hoods (Sigma 70-200/2.8, DA*16-50 and DA*50-135) in huge crowds while shooting music festivals and other gigs when I was doing it commercially. All three times I was successful them.

Am I just unusually lucky, or do others love their gear so much they will turn the world upside down to find a missing bit?

06-23-2019, 08:49 AM - 2 Likes   #2
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I have lost the press on cap of the DA 40mm XS

and no recovery

but on the bright side

I was at the Rivals Sports Bar in the right field corner of Kauffman Stadium for opening day

I started to walk to my seat in the 5th inning and realized I had left the clear plastic bag containing my extra lenses in the bar

since I had been taking photos from that vantage point and had changed lenses while doing so, there is no question that folks had seen what was in the bag

I went back asap ( 10 minutes ) and found it without a problem
06-23-2019, 08:57 AM - 4 Likes   #3
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I've never recovered any of many lost lens caps and have even managed to lose a polarizing filter on a hike.

On the other hand, I do find money: 80 dollars on a crowded sidewalk on Nathan Rd in Hong Kong; various 1£ coins here and there; a $10 bill on the side of the road on a 40 mile bike ride, an 1873 silver dime in the muck of a drained lake, etc.

Maybe the lucky money covers the loss of the unlucky lens caps.
06-23-2019, 09:20 AM - 2 Likes   #4
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Lost and found

On a hike in the woods once I noticed the rubber eye cup and diopter eyepiece on my Nikon F2 camera were missing.
On reflection I remembered at the beginning of the trail I had opened the camera back to load film.
An hour or so later on my return to the trailhead I searched and somehow managed to find both lost items.
That was pretty remarkable, considering it was autumn and the ground was covered with a thick blanket of brightly colored leaves.

In the early 1980's my brothers old Petri SLR had died, so I lent him my then brand-new Nikon FM for his vacation.
He admitted that at one point he left the camera bag with body and lenses inside on the floor at a busy museum.
When he remembered an hour later he went back to that place and there it was, lying there completely undisturbed.
Today I'm confident it would have been grabbed by someone - or picked up and "defused" by the bomb squad!

Chris


Last edited by ChrisPlatt; 06-24-2019 at 04:41 PM.
06-23-2019, 09:25 AM - 2 Likes   #5
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Good deal. On many of my most used lenses, I leave the OEM lens cap at home and put on a generic brand. It doesn't hurt when you lose one of those.
06-23-2019, 09:41 AM - 5 Likes   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by photoptimist Quote
I've never recovered any of many lost lens caps and have even managed to lose a polarizing filter on a hike.

On the other hand, I do find money: 80 dollars on a crowded sidewalk on Nathan Rd in Hong Kong; various 1£ coins here and there; a $10 bill on the side of the road on a 40 mile bike ride, an 1873 silver dime in the muck of a drained lake, etc.

Maybe the lucky money covers the loss of the unlucky lens caps.
That reminds me of one of my favourite stories.

I was driving home to Timmins from Toronto by myself (7 hours if you go non-stop) early in the evening, after dark, so i stopped in at one of those road side dinners for coffee. There was a guy at the counter beside me and one of us started up a conversation.

Anyway, at some point I asked him what he did, he said
"I find money for God."
"Really?"
"Ya, I made a deal with him, I find money and I donate half to the martyrs shrine."

So, not being terribly religious, I sort of think "Well OK then." and moved on to another topic.
At one point he said goodbye and started to leave, on the way out the door I saw him bend over and pick up a $10 bill.

You can play the twilight zone music now.
You don't have to be religious to know, sometimes the universe works in strange ways.

Last edited by normhead; 06-23-2019 at 09:46 AM.
06-23-2019, 10:11 AM - 5 Likes   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by photoptimist Quote
On the other hand, I do find money: 80 dollars on a crowded sidewalk on Nathan Rd in Hong Kong; various 1£ coins here and there; a $10 bill on the side of the road on a 40 mile bike ride, an 1873 silver dime in the muck of a drained lake, etc.
Next time I buy a lottery ticket, I'm rubbing your belly for luck

06-23-2019, 10:17 AM - 2 Likes   #8
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Generally I have had good luck finding mislaid items of all types except SD cards. For whatever reason those disappear between the card slot on my PC and the card slot in the camera. I have no explanation how. Lens caps go in the bag when the camera is being used and cameras go in the bag when not being used, so if a cap is missing it is almost always in the bag.

The other things I’ve permanently lost I surmise fell into the trash receptacle next to my reading chair. What’s really remarkable is when lost items reappear of their own accord:

I lost a pair of prescription sunglasses and was completely mystified where I could have lost them. They had been in the breast pocket of my suit coat when I switched them for regular glasses after lunch and weren’t in my office or anywhere around my house. I replaced them at considerable expense. The following spring
a visitor saw them sitting on the corner of my front porch. They were spottless. I suppose coming in the house after work I had unconsciously bent over to pull a weed and never thought about it, but normally I’d be wearing the sunglasses outdoors with the regular glasses in the coat pocket, and how would they be spotless after a winter on the corner of the front porch? Maybe one of the landscapers found them and put them there. Or maybe the pixies found them and left them on the porch.

I’ve lost the little screw in cap to my DA40/2.8 several times and backtracked to find it as long as three days later. When I switched to HD from SMC I changed to silver to match my KP. The silver is easier to find The remarkable thing is seeing it on the ground before I know it is missing, so was it ever really lost? Pixies?

I once misplaced the flash shoe cover to my brand new K-3 - I mean Christmas Day new - and it stayed lost for a couple years. I’m just anal enough that it bothered me every time I used my K-3. One day in the center of the top of my chest of drawers there it sat. No explanation for how it got there. Pixies?

Last edited by monochrome; 06-23-2019 at 11:35 AM.
06-23-2019, 11:21 AM - 2 Likes   #9
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I don't generally lose stuff like lens caps and such. I favor pinch caps and tend to put them in my pants pocket* when not on the lens. Most of my hoods are screw-on. Those accept a 58mm pinch cap such that the "real" cap is seldom being used when out in the field. I have a ton of the 58mm caps. I have never actually used the push-on cap that came with my FA 77/1.8 Limited, nor do I generally use any of the push-on caps that I keep for display purposes on my various film cameras. Ditto for the friction-press hood original to my S-M-C Takumar 28/3.5. I have a plethora of 49mm hoods and caps.

I will confess, however, to a recent cap loss on a steep cliffside trail above Buffalo Creek in the Appalachian Mountains near Lenore, North Carolina. The original pinch cap that came with my Sigma 17-70/2.8-4.0 (C) is notoriously fiddly and prone to simply popping off with little persuasion. On that day, it took a fatal leap and was not retrieved. I know where it is, but have little inclination to retrieve it. Its place has been taken by a very competent Sensei cap from Amazon.

Steve

(...not looking forward to the day when the cap from my Zenitar Fisheye takes a leap...)


* In the summer, I favor cargo short...more pockets...

Last edited by stevebrot; 06-23-2019 at 11:31 AM.
06-23-2019, 11:38 AM - 4 Likes   #10
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From my post of November 2014:

Typical Melbourne spring day yesterday: overcast punctuated by alternate patches of brilliant sunshine and frigid violent squalls. I was walking around Albert Park (the venue for the Australian Formula 1 Grand Prix at the end of summer but inhabited by people walking or running around the lake or playing various sports for the rest of the year) taking a few pictures. As I was putting my gear back in the car to leave, a squall hit, ripping a couple of cotton grocery bags from the boot (i.e., "trunk" to Americans) and sending them scurrying across the grass. I took off in pursuit, with my partially open camera bag bouncing on my back. Having retrieved the bags, I set off for home. Once there though, I noticed my DA 15 was missing!! My mind flashed back to the episode at Albert Park, and I guessed that it had jumped out in that wild few seconds. So back I went in forlorn hope that it might still be there (2 hours later) ... and it was! Just lying on a grassy hill, seemingly none the worse for wear. What a relief.

Nevertheless, it endured at least one bout of heavy rain. I have held it up to the light and looked through both ends with the aperture wide open (which isn't physically very wide on the DA 15) and can't see any sign of moisture, even with a magnifying glass.


The lens is still going strong.
06-23-2019, 12:25 PM   #11
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Fair to middling on the luck stakes. I seldom lose stuff as I suffer with OCD and am constantly checking and rechecking but my partner loses stuff with alarming regularity which is terrible for my OCD as a lost pair of glasses will result in an all day ordeal for me to find them again. Days out have been cancelled as I strip the house searching for partners missing car keys, lost battery, wallet, phone etc.

I once lost a pair of sunglasses on a trail, by the time I noticed it was far too late to go back. Weirdly about 2 miles further on the trail I found a pair of sunglasses in their case which were nicer than mine. I would have handed them to their owner if we had ever found any other hikers but we didnt. So I suppose thats lucky.

I still yearn to find an immaculate LX in a junk shop going for a fiver
06-23-2019, 12:31 PM - 2 Likes   #12
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I lost a 44mm lens cap that slipped out of my hand and rolled off a bridge over a highway overpass in Reykjavík. I saw it float down into a thick patch of long grass and I knew it wouldn't be likely I'd find it at night in the rain. To console myself I went to the world-famous hot dog stand where I promptly found a 2000kr bill (about $18 USD) and figured it was a wash. I never did replace the cap.
06-23-2019, 12:50 PM - 2 Likes   #13
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So far I haven‘t contended myself with just losing a lens cap or hood. I have lost my complete equipment on two occations.

The first was in a restaurant, where we stopped for lunch. I took my camera bag with me and sat it in the chair next to me. Almost one hour after we had continued our trip we stopped to take a picture ... just to realize the camera was gone! We turned around and headed back to the restaurant.

The second was on a trip back from Asia. After travelling for more than 24 hours with little rest I was so tired that I forgot the camera bag in the metro in the overhead compartment (plus passports, credit cards and $1000 in cash). I went back to the station and called the metro hotline.

On both occations did I get my stuff back, one time by an attentative waitress, the other by an honest conductor. So yes, I would consider myself lucky. Would I have put in so much energy in recovering the things lost if it had been only a lens cap? I‘m not so sure...
06-23-2019, 01:08 PM - 1 Like   #14
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I'm 50/50 with lost caps, luckily the one i couldn't find was for a junk lens anyway.

Looking forward to seeing pics from LeMans. I would love to get there and to Spa one day.
06-23-2019, 01:35 PM - 4 Likes   #15
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I think I'm gonna win this one.

It was in 2009. I was for a day visit with a friend to Amsterdam down in the center. With me my brand new K-7 and on it the da*16-50mm lens. Just snapt some images, nothing special. At some point we stopped for an icecream. We sat on a bench outsite the icecream shop to enjoy the ice. Tasted great. Then we continued our walk true the town. At one point my friend said.....where is your camera......? Oops.... So we went back to the icecream shop and came there about half an our after we left. On the bench outside the shop was my camera...... Probably to obvious as bate for thiefs to fall for this....thinking the police must be watching. We took another icecream!
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