[séamuis]

You never got the camera back? Is it still sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic? It would be interesting if someone recovered your roll of film in a few thousand years or so, and wonder what this photography thing was that we had. Or someone already found it.

there are probably thousands of cameras at the bottom of the ocean. his is just one among many in the big sea.

[grey goat]

I've never broken a camera (knock on wood!), but I came close. Years ago at Hanging Rock State Park in North Carolina, I slipped on wet stone below a waterfall. I was young then, and as I fell I thrust my arm and hand into the air to protect my Fujica ST801. I was lucky--neither I nor the camera was hurt.

My dad's Retina Reflex S wasn't so lucky. It'd given us 25 years or so of faithful service when he decided to loan it to someone for an overseas trip. It returned, seeming none the worse for wear. But once we opened the back, we could see that the [insert appropriate adjective here] idiot he'd loaned it to had stuck his finger through the leaf shutter.

Sigh. The Retina Reflex S still hasn't been repaired. But it sure was a nice camera, and maybe it will be again. (Anyone know a good Retina Reflex repair person?)

[RioRico]

there are probably thousands of cameras at the bottom of the ocean. his is just one among many in the big sea.

There may be tens of thousands of cameras lost at sea -- some torn from the grasps of unlucky voyagers, some gone to the bottom with even unluckier voyagers themselves, and yet others in bulk in commercial shipments. Alas! Seawater is not kind to the constituent components of cameras, new or old. Those lost in the deep are now mostly corroding lumps of metal with bits of plastic protruding, of no more use to anyone than are chunks of potato that have passed through a goose. Film abrades and dissolves; electronic components discharge and dissolve; data is overcome by entropy. Bottles of alcohol cast into the sea may find their contents aged in satisfying ways. But Neptune's cameras are just so much trash now. Pity.

[er1kksen]

You never got the camera back? Is it still sitting on the bottom of the Atlantic? It would be interesting if someone recovered your roll of film in a few thousand years or so, and wonder what this photography thing was that we had. Or someone already found it.

Too bad you probably couldn't get any images from it. Though apparently the water in Lake Erie (which I live on) is just slightly acidic enough to slowly, slowly develop film. Too bad ocean water is probably basic.

[Gene Temple]

The karma gods slap you once in a while.......

[Stevopedia]

I dropped my ME Super three feet onto a hard concrete floor. It landed on the top right of the body (near the shutter release) and broke the filter I had on the lens. It also broke the frame counter and damaged the shutter release (the lightmeter, and therefore all the electronic shutter speeds, no longer work.)

Moral of the story: always use a strap, kids!

(Anybody want/need an ME Super for parts or repair? :P )

[Tuner571]

I dropped my ME Super three feet onto a hard concrete floor. It landed on the top right of the body (near the shutter release) and broke the filter I had on the lens. It also broke the frame counter and damaged the shutter release (the lightmeter, and therefore all the electronic shutter speeds, no longer work.)

Moral of the story: always use a strap, kids!

(Anybody want/need an ME Super for parts or repair? :P )

Wow, that sounds almost exactly like my friends story with his canon, but he was much more lucky as his camera did not break. However, I will say that I never want to see a camera bouncing like that again, it was just to painful.

[Andi Lo]

I dropped my ME Super three feet onto a hard concrete floor. It landed on the top right of the body (near the shutter release) and broke the filter I had on the lens. It also broke the frame counter and damaged the shutter release (the lightmeter, and therefore all the electronic shutter speeds, no longer work.)

Moral of the story: always use a strap, kids!

(Anybody want/need an ME Super for parts or repair? :P )

I think I almost dropped my camera more times when the strap got caught in something moreso than when I'm not... just imho though.

My own story. Lent my ME super to a friend and it "broke". The lever sometimes wouldn't catch on the shutter and I have to wind the lever twice, wasting film in the process. After an hour of shutter-clicking and shutter advance-flicking, it returned to normal. From this I learned how picky my ME super is. It wants to be wound right after the exposure. If this is not done, on the next advance the shutter wouldn't catch on and it ends up having to be wound twice. Although it's not my friend's fault, I'm not lending this ME to anyone anymore since it's just a little too quirky....

The aperture lever (the thing missing from current DSLRS) also becomes a little stuck, but it's been a little stiff even before I lent it.

[eddie1960]

i've been lucky, the closest i eve came was dropping my first SLR ( a russian zenit) from 30 feet above the ice over the goal at a hockey game, I was lucky it hit the top of the net first to slow it down, bounced out landed on it's edge on the ice (and left a whacking dent in the ice)
I ran down grabbed it expecting the worst, picked it up and it worked fine, mind you it weighed a ton and i think was made from refurbished tank treads lol
but it was reliable the whole time I owned it
i have seen some pretty nasty damage from much smaller drops on modern cameras, most of them are just not built for the abuse

this is the most amazing camera write off I've seen

You Tube

You Tube

[magkelly]

I fell once with my first digital point and shoot in my hands. But the only thing I hurt was my own tush. I ended up with a strained ligament in my shoulder, my back severely out of wack, and a really sore behind from landing on my tail bone doing it but my little 1.3 MP Fuji landed quite safely in my lap though it went up like 3 feet into the air when I fell.

[mlatour]

I've dropped, frozen, soaked my Fuji S9100 many times over a 4 year period,
last spring the flash hotshoe mount finally broke off.

This summer I broke the hotshoe off a Sigma EF-530 DG Super flash
and dropped a DA 12-24mm onto a concrete sidewalk (did cosmetic damage only!)

Consider that 'normal' wear & tear considering the general abuse my gear goes thru.

Michel

[tibbitts]

I dropped my canon fd 28-55mm in a stream. It was only submerged for a few seconds in the very clean water. It continued to work fine, but there was a visible haze on an inside element, and I couldn't figure out how to get the lens apart to clean it.

Paul

[urje]

yup, I put a film P&S in an apparently-not-entirily-waterproof waterproof pouch during a catamaran ride on lake Erie, only to take it out totally soaked. Got some funky coloured prints out of it, and a better camera through insurance. Also, I dropped a Sigma 24mm on the floor of the Bilbao Guggenheim when I changed lenses on my Oly OM-1. That was sad, as I only had a 50 and 135 to do the rest of the trip.
Both these accidents are quite some time ago, back in the day that I didn't shoot all that much. In my dSLR days, I've been very lucky so far.

[normhead]

I lost one when I sunk a canoe on the White River in Northern Ontario. (I'll never take an ultra-ligh into white water again.) it was in my pack but in a zip-lock , which turned out to be not a waterproof container. It was an old 450x 200 pixel image deal, but cost $800. Things were tough in the old days. I now have pelican cases for all my gear. My D *ist burned out a circuit board and needed a $750 repair, not that I had anything to do with it. I would have settled for a K-100D , they were going for about $500 at the time. It's one of the few times in my life I've bought an extended warranty on anything, and I made money on it. Weird.

My first camera a Pentax S1, I was getting off a bus, when I saw an older woman having a really hard time with her bag, so I helped her off. I went back for my camera on the shelf and it was gone. I asked the bus driver to check the passengers coming off, he says " I'm not a cop and I'm not writing a book." Let no good deed go unpunished. The cop thing was a popular saying at the time. Someone would ask something inappropriate and the response was "Are you a cop?... or just writing a book?" We all said it.