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Ever lose an expensive piece of gear?

chrono1081

chrono1081

macrumors G3
Original poster
Jan 26, 2008
8,943
6,722
Isla Nublar
Ever lose an expensive piece of gear? I have....

...two polarizers are missing. $450 down the drain :(, right before my Hawaii trip too :(
 
I lost a Nikon F80 to my own stupidity. Don't put your camera in a bicycle basket. And then run over a speed bump in excess of 30 km/h. No, just don't put your camera in a bicycle basket, period! ;)
 
chrono1081 said:
Ever lose an expensive piece of gear? I have....

...two polarizers are missing. $450 down the drain :(, right before my Hawaii trip too :(
Click to expand...

Wow, $450?! Were these two polarizers gold plated or something? :eek:

OreoCookie said:
I lost a Nikon F80 to my own stupidity. Don't put your camera in a bicycle basket. And then run over a speed bump in excess of 30 km/h. No, just don't put your camera in a bicycle basket, period! ;)
Click to expand...

Heh. I remember you sharing this story here many years ago...have I been around here that long?? I'm sure it wasn't funny to you at the time, but it is a rather amusing anecdote to envision. Sounds like an episode of Mr. Bean or something. :p
 
Holy crap I'm so happy! I found them (kind of).

I found the 77mm one and the 82mm I found but I found the thick one, not the slim one (the slim one is needed because it goes on a wide angle lens) but then I remembered....

...the slim one was destroyed by a curious Kea in New Zealand who was smart enough to unzip my backpack when I wasn't looking and snap it in his beak :eek:

Thankfully the only thing that was hurt was the polarizing filter since it cracked, but no glass shards went anywhere.

----------
Phrasikleia said:
Wow, $450?! Were these two polarizers gold plated or something? :eek:
Click to expand...

No, I bought them back in my naive photography days when I believed the whole "triple coated" hype.

In reality triple coated looks the exact same as a standard polarizer, at least to me. I literally can't see a difference between the two shooting glass, water, sky, etc.
 
I damaged my Pentax DA 12-24mm Ultra wide by slipping over wet rocks and it taking a hard impact to the side. The glass was fine physically but the zoom ring is hard to turn. :( They're about $1000 to replace.

The only thing is the corners seem to appear softer than before, but I don't know if that's just me :eek: :p
 
Hi,

Not quite but an amazing escape! Sort of...

A few years ago I built a camera rig that could be hung below a large lifting kite. A somewhat " Heath Robinson " start to my Kite Aerial Photography hobby!

While flying the kite and camera the wind just suddenly stopped blowing. Down came the kite and the camera - Splat! onto very hard ground. I was astounded to find that the crash bars on the rig had worked. The camera had survived the impact totally. A fall of somewhere around 250feet and I still have the camera!

Regards.

Z
 
Tackle

i haven't lost camera gear but I lost a 80# class rod & reel when we were fishing for giant bluefin tuna off of Hatteras about 12 years ago. It's a pretty good story now but I was in agony at the time. The whole rig was about $1,500.
I live in Kitty Hawk, about 75 miles or so from Hatteras where my boat was. After a day of fishing for the giants, we were catching and releasing up to 40 or so a day, I put the rod in the back of the truck and headed home. When I get home I walked around to the back of the truck and no rod, no reel, no nothing. I was dumbfounded. I've carried all kinds of stuff in the back of trucks over the years and never lost anything but maybe an empty beer can or two. Well I got back in the truck hauled butt back over the last 20 miles and looked high and low but no luck.
In the next few days someone, after hearing of the loss suggested I make a claim on my homeowners insurance. I figured it was worth a try. The claims lady was kind and while we discussed it I said the only thing I could come up with was someone grabbed it out of the back while I was stopped at the half dozen stoplights I encountered. She said something to the effect of it being such a dumbass story, I couldn't be making it up and paid for the gear minus a couple of hundred deductible.
Crazy story, right?
Sometime in the next few weeks my friendly neighborhood tackle store bud told me someone came in his shop and said they found a rod & reel along the side of the road but he figured it was too busted up to fix. Tackle store bud knew where he worked so I got a name and tracked him down and called and met him at his home. After listening to his part of the mystery we figured out what had happened.
When I put the rig in the back of the truck, I had the lever action drag backed all the way off. You fishermen got it figured out by now. At some point, the line, severrtal hundred yards of 100# test line, unreeled itself and I was dragging it down the highway. At some point there was enough line in the road or someone drove over the trailing line and it snatched the whole works out of the truck.
Sorry to drag this out but I'm almost done.
My tackle guy suggested that we send the Shimano Tiagra reel back to Shimano and see what they could do. Shimano said there really wasn't anything to salvage on the $900 reel but they would let me have a new one at dealers cost.
Sorry for being so long-winded on a non-camera tale but it is kind of funny now. Not funny then but funny now.
 
Almost lost a full camera bag - about $6000 of gear, purchase price.

I was returning home from a vacation, had to get on a local train from the airport to home.

With all my bags, I somehow left my camera bag with D30 (this was 11 years ago!) and a few lenses on the ground outside the train and didn't realize it until the train had left the station. It took 40 minutes of panic to get off at the next station, get on a train the other direction, and get back to where I was.

An old lady was standing next to my bag looking around for the owner! I grabbed the bag and she jumped on the train that I just jumped off of.

Nowadays, they would have blown up the bag before I could have gotten back, I imagine.
 
fa8362 said:
Buy it online instead.
Click to expand...

Sadly online they're that price too :(

I was shopping for replacements last night before I found my one and the lowest I saw for 77mm thread (that was a decent brand) was around $150. The lowest descent brand 82mm thread for a slim polarizer was around $180.
 
mulo said:
walk in to any photo gear store where I live and ask for a 77mm polarizer and the salesman will charge you between $200-300 for a decent filter
Click to expand...

You can get good multi-coated B&W or Hoya filters online for half that amount. I have quite a collection of them, and I don't think I've ever paid more than about $150 for a screw-on type.

chrono1081 said:
No, I bought them back in my naive photography days when I believed the whole "triple coated" hype.

In reality triple coated looks the exact same as a standard polarizer, at least to me. I literally can't see a difference between the two shooting glass, water, sky, etc.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's hype. See this experiment, for example.

chrono1081 said:
Sadly online they're that price too :(

I was shopping for replacements last night before I found my one and the lowest I saw for 77mm thread (that was a decent brand) was around $150. The lowest descent brand 82mm thread for a slim polarizer was around $180.
Click to expand...

I'm no whizz at math, but even I can tell you that doesn't add up to $450. ;)

I was joking about the gold plating, but it turns out B&W does make one like that! Link here. :eek:
 
Phrasikleia said:
You can get good multi-coated B&W or Hoya filters online for half that amount. I have quite a collection of them, and I don't think I've ever paid more than about $150 for a screw-on type.



I don't think it's hype. See this experiment, for example.



I'm no whizz at math, but even I can tell you that doesn't add up to $450. ;)

I was joking about the gold plating, but it turns out B&W does make one like that! Link here. :eek:
Click to expand...

Oops I meant my old ones were $450 not new ones :eek:
 
Coatings matter, although I've used non-coated filters (ND grads) just fine and contrast has been okay if they're shaded from direct light. I'm not sure there's such a difference between different kinds of coatings, though, or at least returns diminish at that point.

I find Hoya's filters to be really affordable given how well they perform. The HMC NDs I bought are great. Don't buy an entry-level Tiffen linear polarizer whatever you do...for whatever reason they are terrible (though their 4X6 linear polarizer for cinema glass is great, so I think they're just being cheap). Schneider filters (B&W) are of course the most highly-regarded, but expensive.

I don't know if I've lost gear worth more than a few hundred dollars at a time, but I've destroyed or damaged thousands of dollars worth of gear at this point, probably. At least it means you're using it!
 
Phrasikleia said:
You can get good multi-coated B&W or Hoya filters online for half that amount. I have quite a collection of them, and I don't think I've ever paid more than about $150 for a screw-on type.
Click to expand...

I live in europe, buying online from the US will get me caught in customs, no I have to smuggle through the airport
 
Phrasikleia said:
Heh. I remember you sharing this story here many years ago...have I been around here that long?? I'm sure it wasn't funny to you at the time, but it is a rather amusing anecdote to envision. Sounds like an episode of Mr. Bean or something. :p
Click to expand...
Well, it's certainly easier to laugh about this story now than it was 9 years ago (the incident occurred in fall 2003, that's how long it has been!). I had saved a year to buy that camera and lens, and it all went in a bout of stupidity with no one else to blame but me …*;) But I am usually one who tries to cope with hardship by laughing about it.

I'm positively surprised you remember this anecdote! :)
 
Oh yes...

Yeah, while in Puerto Rico (and still getting used to my new sling-type bag), I took off my 70-300 IS USM, put it in the bag, and put on my Tamron. I handed the bag to my wife, figuring she would zip it up for me (since she's so wonderful like that). She accepted the bag, but, figuring that since I'm usually so careful, assumed the bag was zipped and secured. I got the shot of the hotel I wanted, slung the bag over my shoulder, and we started walking to dinner.

Along the way, I heard an awful noise just behind me. We both turned around to see my 70-300 rolling away with the front glass cracked to high heaven. My wife started to cry, and I told her it was going to be ok (lie; I was freaking out inside), stooped and picked up the lens. The polarizing filter was bent and shattered, but when I finally pried it off, the actual glass on the lens was totally undamaged. We were soooo relieved! We both always double-check the bag now :)
 
About 5 years ago my wife and I were walking through the gardens at the Mt Kinabalu National Park in Sabah, Borneo when we stopped on a wooden bridge that crossed a fast running creek to take a photo.
I pulled our Canon digital SLR out of a camera bag and a loose 70-200 zoom lens came out with it, hit the deck of the bridge and took one bounce into the creek.
I retrieved the lens within 30 seconds but it was a write-off.
 
I lost a Canon 580EX ii at a wedding ..... I literally started looking for it within an hour of setting it down in the hotel we were at, and someone must have grabbed it. I'm more surprised because it was a Hilton and you'd think they're more careful on staffing and that =\.

$500ish gone . . . =\
 
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