I wouldn't say weird. There are plenty of people who've gotten service outside of the technical terms, whether bashing it up or losing a shutter outside of warranty. I guess it depends on the center you send it to and who you end up dealing with. I can see this being repaired for free if it's approached from the perspective of "Why the heck did this snap on me in the middle of a very important Alaskan shoot?" as opposed to "I'm sorry, I sat on my lens".
agreed, I imagine the hood would snap off at the treads.
Matt Philbin wrote:
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!
looks nasty at first, but after looking at the photos, I do not really see anything "wrong" - yes, it's in 2 pieces, but as has been stated, I'm quite sure it was designed to break just like this should something unfortunate happen. It's possible that all it will need is a barrel replacement piece and a calibration and it will be like new....
I swore I remember reading that lenses were in fact designed to break in certain points to save the optics, something about the 24-70 2.8L especially....
good luck, hope it comes back better than ever, and without too big a dent in your wallet...
OK, my daughter is an EMT, she tells me all sorts of stories after injury but your pics are so graphic! Oh, that makes me feel sick...............
Interesting innards. Plastic vs metal? I have a feeling that there is some rather cheap metals that exist as far as strength goes. Metals trasfer heat and cold much more intensely than plastic, not good. Remember putting your tongue on that metal pole when you were a kid. Metals also can create magnetic fields and cause interference in electronics and possibly stabalizers. Polycarbonate at a certain thickness I believe is bullet proof, comfortable at all temps on the hands and extremely durable.
I'm gonna let Canon decide what works best, to suspend their 'L' glass in. So far, I have not doubted the integrity of an L glass lens.
I hope surgery goes well, I am sure your lens will recover faster than you!! That was a very graphic story............Ha! Good luck Matt, I hope to never hear another story like this again.
I did this to the other end of my 24-105 L on Halloween -- knocked it off my desk onto the floor and the front element popped clean out of the barrel. After cleaning up my tears, and coming to terms with my shock that the front element is held in place by three very small screws passing through three very narrow plastic slots (which snapped clean off) I packaged up the two halves neatly and sent it off to Jersey. 10 days and $182 later, it was back and sharper than it had been, as they calibrated it for me too.
I buy into the notion that these lenses have fail points that, while not necessarily designed into them, are known to Canon. You may be luckier than if it had stayed in one piece -- when my wife dropped my 20d and 100-400, bending the filter ring and putting a small nick in the front element but leaving the lens intact, the repair bill was over $400.
There's no way that Canon designed a "break point" for that lens. You guys have got to be kidding yourselves.
These kinds of occurrences are waaaaaay too infrequent to spend any time on engineering costs associated with that kind of thing. The problem with something like this is that a "break point" decreases the threshold over which the lens will actually be damaged (though it also reduces the cost of fixing said damage). That means: more instances of damage at lower cost per incident.
Incidence x damage cost per incident = total cost
A break point moves one number up and one number down. Going from metal to plastic for a breakpoint would increase the total incidence by a TON (1,000%?), whereas it would probably only reduce the cost to fix by a relatively small amount (50%?). Hell, we know that you can't reduce the cost more than 100% of the cost of the lens, and fixing a lens that is broken in half probably costs a few hundred bucks minimum so those numbers give a good limit.
Safe to say the break point is just a carryover from trying to reduce cost and weight. Nothing else.
In an F-1 car the breakpoint is not about saving money, it's about saving a life. The same math does not apply. Break points designed to save money rather than lives have to make economic sense...
Thanks for all the get well wishes for my broken toy. Lance...that sounds like something I would say. Good laugh...thanks! Malice...it does appear to be an easy fix. It's really 4 sets of brackets with 2 screws in each, that would be accessed by removing the metal mount system first. I can't see this taking someone with experience more than 1/2 hour. We'll see what happens. Like I said earlier, I'll resurrect this post later & let everyone know how it goes. Thanks again!
A couple of yrs ago I fell down a cliff with my 70-200/2.8IS and broke my ankle but the lens only got a scratch on the hood. My tears were not only of pain, but at the same time of joy that the camera and lens made it OK. I still limp when the weather gets rainy.
No...I was fine. It was one of those situations where I was so shocked by the lenses' condition that I had to stop and figure out if I hurt myself. I have a 14 month old son, and have fallen while holding him before (tripped over a toy). That time, I was able to protect him by falling in a different direction and "shielding" him from the fall. I just wish that instinct had kicked in yesterday.
