Has anyone ever broken one of your cameras?

So far, I have been "lucky" my only dropped cameras have been ones I have dropped and only once (with an M6) did things get internally scrambled requiring further attention. I have often let kids take picture with my cameras, if I am in reasonable control of the environment. Often their parents admonish them to be careful, but so far kids aged 4-14 seem to understand that the camera is a tool to be treated with at least some care. I have started worrying about my own 4 year old who thinks that snapping pix with Dad's 5D is a birthright. That is a disaster waiting to happen and when it does I will only have myself to blame. On the other hand, I get such a smile from his interest in taking pictures -- possibly it will be worth it when it happens.

BTW - My feeling is that your friend who "dropped and ditched" should be made to take some accountability for his actions. I am certain that his lack of care has permeated other aspects of his life. Time for a wake up.

Ben Marks
 
Kyle said:
Does anyone have any stories of their own?
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No, none exactly like yours. I did break a piece of someone else's camera equipment once. It was a Vivitar flash that belonged to the company I worked for. It fell about 100 ft down a hole in the ground. When it reached the bottom it self-destructed. We had a choice, and the decision had to be made in mili-seconds... it was either the flash or me that was going down the hole. I took the Vivitar parts back to my boss and offered to pay for it. He offered to take it out of my pay cheque, then laughed and said somehting like "I was just joking.". I was relieved to hear that! I still feel bad about the situation, even though that was about 25 years ago. It was a 285 with an aftermarket metal foot and served us well before I broke it.
 
I been using 2 Leica Ms for a year now, the one breaks down last week and does not functioning anymore, the one is functioning but I have problem with the lever, I use it everyday for my assignment, now I sent the two bodies to Hong Kong for repair and CLA.
 
Gumby said:
No, none exactly like yours. I did break a piece of someone else's camera equipment once. It was a Vivitar flash that belonged to the company I worked for. It fell about 100 ft down a hole in the ground. When it reached the bottom it self-destructed. We had a choice, and the decision had to be made in mili-seconds... it was either the flash or me that was going down the hole. I took the Vivitar parts back to my boss and offered to pay for it. He offered to take it out of my pay cheque, then laughed and said somehting like "I was just joking.". I was relieved to hear that! I still feel bad about the situation, even though that was about 25 years ago. It was a 285 with an aftermarket metal foot and served us well before I broke it.
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Hope you salvaged that metal foot, it is probably worth as much as the flash now. ;-)

John
 
One thing perhaps overlooked, the guy charges the same hourly rate to fix a Hasselblad as a P&S, so if you have a nice Leica and it suffers some damage, at least you are not paying $150 to fix a $100 digital. ;-)

My friend Jorge was very happy to get the diaphragm leaves reinstalled in his CV 50 and the RF realigned and adjusted, with a shutter check included, in the M4 that fell on it, for $150. And I was very happy I was the one to get it fixed for him and not the one dropping it.

The kicker in the OP is mainly the attitude of the guy breaking the camera.

He had two choices in his response, and his choice says a lot about him, or his social skills need a bit of tweaking.

There is risk any time you take your camera out, or take it anywhere, or leave it at home. Every time I visit my preferred shop, someone comes in with a P&S someone else dropped with the lens extended. They try to get it to work, but the person is almost always most upset about the person who dropped it.

Just take comfort in that a Leica is worth fixing. ;-)

Regards, John
 
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I handed over my Canon elan 7n to a 5yr old and let him wander around and snap shots. This was years ago between college semesters when I worked at a summer camp. One of the other counselors there was also an aspiring photographer and he came up to me and said "You know Aaron has your camera?" "Yeah, I gave it to him" "ok, just wanted to be sure. I wouldn't let a kid play with my camera. Especially not film."

I just gave him a look like whatev. I thought it would be curious to see what the kid did with it. There were some interesting portraits on that roll. The line that really got me was ..."especially not with film." Like it was something precious. I had 20 other rolls in my bag.
 
My rule: Don't lend it unless you know they are willing and capable of paying - Don't borrow unless you are willing able to pay. I have one person who I exchange equipment with because that is our understanding.
 
People have tried. Oh how people have tried to break my camera. In the past 8 months my camera has been:
- in a tug-of-war
- punched
- hit with a nondescript metal rods

My Leica M2 has survived all of those trials with perhaps a few scratches. Luckily only my M2 has been abused. I don't know how well my other rangefinders would fair against such determined destructors.

No one has accidentally broken a camera of mine. I frequently get comments on my cameras while out-and-about and I'm always happy to let people handle them and let them get a feel for a Leica + Rapidwinder.
 
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At a high school basketball tournament at Farleigh Dickinson Univ. a few years back, I dropped a Canon 20D.

We needed some pics of kids who were being recruited mostly by Big East schools -- easiest to do that after the games when the kids have a second. During the game, I had two cameras with straps around my neck. Grab one, drop the other.

After the game, I took one off and was about to take the other off - saw something that interested me, took a quick shot and then went to grab the other camera with the longer lens....I dropped the camera in my hand assuming that it was still around my neck. At the last millisecond, I realized it wasn't, but it was too late.

It just smacked off the hardwood. Mirror was knocked loose, internals were scrambled, etc. Essex repaired the lens, but the camera had such a laundry list of things wrong with it that it did not make sense to repair it.
 
JohnM said:
At a high school basketball tournament at

It just smacked off the hardwood. Mirror was knocked loose, internals were scrambled, etc. Essex repaired the lens, but the camera had such a laundry list of things wrong with it that it did not make sense to repair it.
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Almost did the same thing, more than once. Someone can probably use some parts from the body. I gave a few bodies to my repair guy, probably should have kept the IIIf though I paid $20 for it, ;-)

Regards, John
 
I have a number of cameras. As for the "good" ones I don't let anyone hold them unless I am extremely familiar with them and know that they absolutely know how to handle a camera. To answer Kyle's unasked question...That would be the last time I would have anything to do with that fellow...period.
 
I had a Pentax MX on a tripod right by the river. I turned my back to get something out of my bag and the tripod fell right into the river. Smashed the filter but nothing else was broken. After a few days the film advance seized. I left it for a couple of years and had it repaired recently. The repair man said there was rust inside the camera. I am very careful now when I am anywhere near water!
 
I think I posted this once before...

I was being so extremely careful when changing lenses on a IIIf, and forgot that I didn't have a strap on the camera, and let it slip from my fingers. I made a sprawling, flailing, NHL goalie quality 'save' and kept it from hitting the floor.

Then, I realised I had just put my thumb through the shutter.

Oh, and it was my father's IIIf. I took it that afternoon to get a new shutter. Needed one anyway, was getting frayed, so it was more humorous than costly.
 
1. Konica IIIa -- knocked it from a high shelf -- utterly wrecked
2. Leica M3 -- dropped into Pacific Ocean -- fixed
3. Leica M7 -- knocked it from table -- whole top, and rewind, replaced
4. Konica RF -- dropped to the ground when my wife opened the car door -- rangefinder realignment took 2 months (don't ask why)
5. Pentax 645N + 2 lenses -- inadvertently thrown away whilst moving
6. Nikon F4 -- dropped into sink filled with water -- too expensive to fix

I do not want to list the lenses that have had mishaps.
 
Benjamin Marks said:
I have started worrying about my own 4 year old who thinks that snapping pix with Dad's 5D is a birthright. That is a disaster waiting to happen and when it does I will only have myself to blame. On the other hand, I get such a smile from his interest in taking pictures -- possibly it will be worth it when it happens.
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Time to buy the little guy his own camera I think 🙂
 
julianphotoart said:
1. Konica IIIa -- knocked it from a high shelf -- utterly wrecked
2. Leica M3 -- dropped into Pacific Ocean -- fixed
3. Leica M7 -- knocked it from table -- whole top, and rewind, replaced
4. Konica RF -- dropped to the ground when my wife opened the car door -- rangefinder realignment took 2 months (don't ask why)
5. Pentax 645N + 2 lenses -- inadvertently thrown away whilst moving
6. Nikon F4 -- dropped into sink filled with water -- too expensive to fix

I do not want to list the lenses that have had mishaps.
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Dear Julian, I won't be able to loan you my camera after all. Sorry, mate. Maybe some other time... okay?
 
Double Negative said:
Thankfully, not really - I don't loan out my gear and very rarely hand it over for anyone to "get a quick shot." Certainly not strangers and/or without putting the strap on first.

I learned my lesson years ago lending my then somewhat new Canon IXUS (a little APS-C jobber) to the girlfriend for a trip to India. It came back and the built-in, self-raising flash rested a bit higher than it should - not fully sinking back down into the camera. No explanation. I didn't ask, either. My guess - she tried pulling up on the flash or it snagged on something and tweaked something internally.

I bought the camera as a "disposable" since it was SO small anyway - and as we all know, APS-C sucks. Still have it and I don't know that I ever really used it much since because the photo/image quality just blew.
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Don't feel too bad about it. The ixus had this problem - it was a design fault. I happen to know because way back "then", my friendly camera store guy (he was friendly as I kept putting money into his hands:^) ) warned me that this would happen sooner or later and voluntarily sent my camera back to be fixed under warranty before it actually did occur. But I subsequently saw many ixus cameras with the problem. So in this case it was not your ex's fault.
 
Drewus said:
Time to buy the little guy his own camera I think 🙂
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That's what they did with me. When I started showing more than a curious interest in Dad's cameras, they got me one (Brownie Starflash) for my B'day, I think age 7.

When I was a bit older they admitted they were afraid I would drop or otherwise mess up one of the "good" cameras. I never did. 🙂 🙂
 
Yes, twenty-five years ago, and I'm still mad about it. I have had to repair it though the years, but when I used it earlier this year; I got a case of hives and started to hyperventilate.

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