Had an unfortunate incident happen yesterday. I was out shooting water birds at Navy Pier in Chicago and fell on the ice. The lens hood hit the ground first (I never did drop the camera), and hit on an angle that really stressed the body of the lens. When I looked down at the camera, the lens was lying there in 2 pieces. Imagine the horror! Only the cables were holding them together. But after I looked a little further, I could see that there are 4 plastic tabs inside the first section of the lens that had been broken on impact. The whole first section (where it says "Image Stabilizer") is plastic. I thought L lenses were all metal. Now, it's off to the NJ service center for surgery. I'm hoping for the best!!
Most likely the guys in Jersey will be able to put it back the way it should be for you.
I like to think of Canon lenses as being like little F1 cars - they`re made to break at certain points so as not to damage something more important (think of the driver pod in an F1 car, which survives in an accident because everything else breaks off to absorb the impact).
When a Canon lens breaks it can look nasty... but it broke that way for a reason. That's how I try to see it at least.
Thanks! What really surprised me was that the hood stayed on. I've heard debates about whether a filter is really needed to protect the end of the lens, and some have said the the hood offers all the protection you need. I never thought the hood would really stay on in an impact. I'm here to tell you...it does. That hood was the first thing to hit the ground when I fell and it stayed on!
This is a good thing folks! It does not mean that canon cheaped out and was using plastic parts on the inside to keep the cost down. It is a designed weakpoint. Think of it like crumple zones on a car. It is designed to take the impact and fail at that point rather than the more important part of the lens further up. That is why they used plastic clips there, and why there are disconnects on the ribbon cables. It is not very difficult or expensive to put it back together. You'll see the 2.8 version do the same thing when dropped. I've seen photos where the 2.8 version has broken in the same location.
Ben Horne wrote:
This is a good thing folks! It does not mean that canon cheaped out and was using plastic parts on the inside to keep the cost down. It is a designed weakpoint.
Photography is not a contact sport. It is made that way to save money and weight, I'm sure. It is only a side-effect of that process that will make it easy to repair
Photography is not a contact sport. It is made that way to save money and weight, I'm sure. It is only a side-effect of that process that will make it easy to repair
True, photography is not a contact sport. However, when when you have seen as many broken lenses as I have (I work at a shop), you will see that they all seem to break the same way -- the first section breaks upon severe impact, and the rest of the lens with the important optics and calibration is spared. I don't think it's just a coincidence that they break this way. Optics engineers are smart enough to know that you need to design a weakpoint, otherwise the important part of the lens will receive a lot more shock.
EF lenses are mostly made of plastic materials. (Exceptions, where barrel is mostly metal: 180L, TS lenses, supertelephotos...).
Two key reasons for that: fabrication cost and lens weight.
Perhaps there is a side benefit as well of plastics proliferation: if a plastic lens suffers an impact, the barrel tends to fall apart thereby absorbing some energy away from the glass elements some of which (e.g, Fl, UD, Asph.) are possibly the most expensive replacement parts in the lens. However, I don't believe that lens crash worthiness (protection of lens internals) has been a design requirement in the adoption of plastic materials.
Ouch. Looks scary, but I like Joel & Ben's take on it--a designed weak point to absorb the energy of an impact. I'll bet that polycarb barrel part is a whole lot cheaper than the lens elements now exposed (actually going with the car analogy, this reminds me a lot of the scary Cheever accident at Indy several years ago--nose of the car disintegrated leaving his legs haning out, but he both survived & is still racing because the car did its job).
I don't recall anywhere that L lenses were promised to be all metal.
I'm sure it will be at least a few days before I hear anything, but I'll update this thread when I get something from Canon. I don't expect them to pay for this, nor should they. I dropped it. They should bill me. And if it's as easily repairable as some think, I'll pay and be very very happy!
(I see the zoom ring weathersealing)