I am really surprised that no one here has expressed real disappointment with how easy a supposedly pro Nikkor lens snapped in half. A one meter drop in a padded camera bag should have resulted in NO DAMAGE at all even for a decent consumer grade lens. What kind of pro caliber lens is so delicate? How can any pro rely on a lens that snaps in half under such minor impact? It seems that the disposable manufacturing culture under which things are designed to break -- not last -- has taken over the photographic industry. I've dropped my twenty plus year old OM-4T and Zuiko 35-80 zoom lens at least three times in a very lightly padded bag from at least 1 meter height onto a hard concrete floor (falling of luggage carts at the airport) without ANY DAMAGE whatsoever, even when the camera bag fell one time upside down (the bag's cover is completely unpadded). This camera lens combination is solidly built, unlike the flimsy plasticky feeling AF lenses made by Canon, Nikon and just about everyone else these days.
Hey trust me, I'm with you on the rail against consumer plasti-cism but aside from the futility and metaphorical dead-end that direction would take us, it doesn't do much good when your initial RFF post is a rant against pretty much the way the entire world works today.
Just to note - no one should ever,
ever leave an SLR body, digital, chrome or kevlar, attached to a telephoto lens weighing roughly 2kg and reaching almost 10" in length and expect it to survive a fall of over 1ft.
Trust me, I'm the one who has to pay out of his own pocket. I would love to do everything in my bag of wily, sneaky powers to get out of paying this if I could. But this time, I'm willing to admit my mistakes and take full responsibility.
If the lens had been detached from the body, I have no doubt both the body and lens would still be in one piece, with nary a scuff to either. As it were, the weakest point between two adjoining pieces is, well, the joint. And that's what broke here. Perhaps there should be a much stronger, kevlar-reinforced mounting system, but no doubt that would be at the detraction of ease-of-use, and time it takes to remove/mount a lens.
On another note, Nikon have just informed me the total repair cost will be US$500 - a
lot less than the US$1000+ I was expecting to pay.
Whew
