Your most expensive broken piece of gear?

[alan davus]

I drowned my M6ttl .58 crossing a flooded river whilst hiking in New Zealand some years ago. The metering system died almost immediately and the shutter a few hours later. I slept with it in my sleeping bag for the rest of the trip hoping body warmth might resurrect it but to no avail. Back home in Oz a repairman was able to get the shutter firing again but alas the metering circuit is permanently kaput. When my wife gave approval for me to buy an M-E last year it was on the implicit promise it would never go hiking in New Zealand. The promise will be kept.

 

[grandallj]

Camera: $575
Repair and overhaul: $590 + shipping
Owning a Leica M2: Priceless?

Repair expense is still TBD (waiting to hear back from Sherry K), but my winner to date will be the M2 I bought out of the classifieds a couple weeks ago and promptly jammed the shutter by dislodging the felt light trap.

 

[ihorzu]

am still waiting for an M9 in the list )))

No, no, no. Just kidding. Happy long life to all your gear, guys.

 

[Corran]

I flipped a canoe near the shore a few years ago and flooded my Nikon F5, which was almost new (to me) and had only about 10 rolls through it. Trashed it completely. Interestingly, I also flooded my Nikon D90 in the same event and it dried out and worked perfect the next day...

Honorable mention is my D800E which fell flat onto its hotshoe and seriously messed up something - but Nikon fixed it under warranty! 🙂

 

[B-9]

I lost my M4-2 baseplate in the snow while loading a roll, didn't find it for 3 days (yesterday) I was preparing to spend 150$ on a replacement, until it peeked out of the snow on my way to my truck (coincidence, I was leaving to order a replacement)

Or maybe the Md-3 motordrive that a pile of Nikon F2s from adoramas used department destroyed.
long story short, the cameras motor coupling had been jammed, resulting in my motor spewing itself all over inside. Not only did I attempt to repair my motor, I promptly repairrd the coupling on the
body (a loose screw jammed in the coupling) Adorama refused.to acknowledge that they sold me a broken camera. I returned the camera, with a majority of its guts soiled with urine.

I will never buy from Adorama, period.

 

[ruby.monkey]

A Schneider 180mm f/2.8 PQ Tele-Xenar - thanks to a combination of lack of sleep and utter stupidity, I applied too much force when trying to remove a cross-threaded lens hood and have buggered up (to use a technical term) something inside it (broken infinity stop?)

I can only hope that it's repairable - £1000 is an expensive way to learn to be less of a moron.

 

[hepcat]

I bought a used, late model M4-2 in 1981 or so.

Lowe Pro was a start-up bag company and had a padded bag in their then-small lineup that I bought. Not too long after I bought it, I had the M4-2 in the Lowe Pro bag along with the Canon LTM lenses I'd had for several years strapped to the back of a Honda 3-wheeler out in the Anza Borrego desert. I was going through an arroyo at about 25mph when the bungi holding the bag to the rack broke. The bag went tumbling down into the sand and rocks of the arroyo behind the three wheeler. I noticed it pretty quickly and turned and retrieved the bag expecting to find shards of glass and bits of ground metal. To my surprise, not only was the gear undamaged, the bag was undamaged and had NO sand in it. I still have that bag on my shelf over thirty years later.

Sometime in 1983 I had the M4-2 on a tripod, and the tripod failed (away from me) with the camera crashing 6' to the rocks I was standing on. It bent the bottom plate and actually cracked the body. The bottom plate and body still fit well and didn't leak light. I used that M4-2 for many years that way.

My most recent "awww-sh*t" was a couple of years ago during a location portrait shoot. I was shooting in a barn and during a break, set my Olympus E5, 35-100 f/2, and Oly flash on the deck of a ski boat that was stored there without detaching the flash cord from the battery pack. Of course, I turned quickly which pulled the coiled cord past its limit and pulled the camera to the concrete pad it was sitting on. I could only watch in horror as it tumbled it's way slo-mo to the slab... the 35-100 f/2 lost its lens mount. There was a scratch on the flash body. I picked the camera up, took the lens mount out of the camera's mount, put a different lens on the body and continued the shoot. $244 later, the 35-100 f/2 was good as new. This shot was taken after the spill with that body. Those E5s are as tough as advertised.


PA070362 by chief1120, on Flickr

 

[seascribe]

A two-week-old Nikon FE body loaded with exposed Kodachrome 25, ensnared in the strap of the F3HP that I was quickly removing from my bag in Trinidad de Cuba. It bounced once through the ornamental ironwork of the balcony before continuing on to its sad end on the stone plaza below.

 

[BlackXList]

My Canon 1D Mk2 died on me at the end of last year, spat out a shutter blade, which in turn damaged the protective filter on the sensor.

I did a lot of work which I'm very fond of with that camera, so I was devastated.
Yesterday I gave it a tidy up, it might never shoot again, but at least it's going to look the part.

 

[raid]

So far, so good. Nothing has broken because of me.
The Zeiss Planar 85/1.4 has damaged aperture blades, and now it is set to wide open only.

 

[Noll]

I suppose that would be my venerable Olympus e510. She finally bit the dust when it rolled out of my car door (unbeknownst to me) during camping and suffered under a 2" rain deluge that night. After taking it apart, though, had the top panel not been upside-down in a small puddle of water I suspect it might have made through that episode. $400 new, though I wouldn't mind buying on again once they depreciate to the $50 range.

 

[css9450]

When I was about 15 I was riding my bike with my parent's old (early-60s vintage) Minolta SR1 around my neck and resting across my back by its strap. Unfortunately, the strap held the never-ready case better than it did the camera, and at one point it rolled out of the case and took a tumble on the road. Aside from several scrapes and scratches, it looked like the only damage was a bent filter ring on the lens (lenscap must've popped off on impact). I got in HUGE trouble when I got home and fessed up what had happened.

Some months later I was enrolled in a photo class at school. We took an all-day field trip to Chicago for shooting pics. Sounds like fun right? While still on the first roll of the day, the old Minolta jammed and has never worked since. I got in trouble that night as well, only doubly so, since clearly I was to blame for ruining the camera due to the earlier incident falling off the bike.

 

[gns]

I have a Plaubel Makina W67 that I bought new in the 80's. It was the only camera I used for about 15 years. I haven't used it at all for several years and finally decided to sell it, so I sent it off to Plaubel in Frankfurt to repair several issues first, I just got an estimate back from them...about $1700.00!
Now I have to decide between paying for the repairs and hoping to get my money back on a sale, trying to sell it as is, or just forgetting the whole thing and putting it back in the closet.

 

[news shooter]

Operator error...

Operator error...

Just this past weekend, was walking across a creek with rocks everywhere I stepped. Some were hidden. Had my Nikon S3 around my neck when I tripped fell forward slamming the camera against a rock. Luckily nothing broken, neither camera nor lens.
It was when I turned the camera upside down, that noticed where it hit the rock, on the baseplate. Big dent near open/close key. Fortunately, it was stiff and hard to open but, managed. It was a sad affair as it's my first rangefinder camera, a dream camera at that.
Last night, was checking winding and shutter function when the advance lever and shutter button locked up. Really bummed about it. That worst is a little voice said, " why don't you sling that camera over your shoulder and neck so it rides behind out of the way." Now, when I can afford it and the bank (wife) says get it fixed, well, that's another story. Hopefully it won't be a shelf queen for too long. By the way, anybody have a beater back to fit this one? Gotta be rarer than a honest politician. HA
Thanks for all the posts! Wow, some true tragedy.
Ross

 

[Frontman]

Dropped a Nikon SP, which broke the prism and blacked out the viewfinder. I have givn up trying to find a replacement, so I am attempting to make one myself.

 

[zuiko85]

I guess my worst in the last few years was a Sekonic Studio Deluxe that I had found in a bin at a photo show in great condition for $5. Not 6 months later I dropped it on the sidewalk and smashed it beyond recovery. Looked and looked but they are expensive even used.

 

[bucs]

Hexar AF. Electronics died on me after 6 months of service. Never trusted cameras that fully rely on electronics to work since.

 

[x-ray]

Oh yeah. I fell off of a bridge in 2009, 30ft, my E3 survived but the 14-54mm sheared off at the lens mount. I spend eight weeks in a coma and three months in the hospital.

Wow!!! Amazing you survived but glad the hear you made it.

I pulled a 50 distagon fit a Hasselblad off actable and destroyed it. It belonged to the company I worked for.

I was on an industrial shoot and opened my Sinar Norma case and lifted it out. My 121 SuperAngulon was Oman adapter board and the latch had slipped out of the locked position. The lens fell about five feet and hit on the edge of the rear mount shattering two elements, warping the shutter an rendering it useless. I was lucky, I found another that the rear was good and the front trashed and got it cheap. I sent it to Schneider and got a new shutter and the lens adjusted and aligned. It turned out like new.

Also had the lanyard on my 30 year old Minolta IV meter let go and trashed it. Concretes tough on them.

 

[Vics]

My Nikon FM2n just packed up entirely on my trip to the Olympic Peninsula in WA. Mirror's up, shutter's jammed and so is the advance lever. I didn't like the camera much, anyway, so I probably won't get it fixed.

 

[dof]

Mine has to be my formerly beloved Gossen Ultra-Pro meter. This was one expensive lesson in removing the batteries before storing a piece of gear for a while. The havoc that a $2.00 battery can wreak upon a (once upon a time) $500.00 meter is genuinely impressive.

Ladies and gentlemen, let this be a lesson to you!

Nice to see this thread pop up again. Sometimes life brings us pleasant surprises.

I was planning to bring the Ultra-Pro to a recent electronics recycling day where I work, and decided on a whim to try once again to see if the Ultra-Pro just might have some life left in it. It did!

I had to learn how to open up the case, which involves warming up some adhesive on the back and carefully removing the metal plate that the instructions are printed on. Doing so exposes the screws that hold the front and back together.

Once the case was open, I cleaned out the residual corrosive material left by the old battery, popped in a new one, turned it one and the meter was back in business. Easy-peasy.

As luck would have it though, when the time came to reassemble everything, the small (tiny, actually) wire leads to the battery compartment broke. Thankfully that was nothing that a quick dab of heat from a trusty soldering iron couldn't repair.

The Ultra-Pro is back. It's good to be a little handy, especially when you're a bit of a klutz.