Incidents happen in sport in a blink of an eye. And it took precisely that long to leave this photographer with a lens smashed into pieces. Professional baseball player Tyler O’Neill sent a foul ball straight into his lens, and it was caught on the very camera that got hit.
Apparently, yes, you can you shoot portraits with a smashed up rear lens element
So many of us baby our gear. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Despite the fact that the odd scratch here and there isn’t going to affect the performance of my kit, I’m still going to try to take the best care of it that I can. But sometimes accidents happen.
And an accident is what happened to Christopher Hamberger when he dropped his $1,200 Nikon 35mm f/1.4 Ai-S lens and shattered the rear element. Can it still shoot, though? How will that decimated rear element affect the images? Well, there’s only one way to find out. Shoot with it.
This is why you shouldn’t throw away smashed ND filters
What would you do if your ND filter got severely cracked? Throw it away, of course. But don’t do it just yet – you can still make something awesome with it even when it’s broken beyond repair. Photographer Parker Rice experimented with a smashed filter and he got some really cool effect in his photos.
Watch: Photographer nukes camera by opening a collapsible reflector
Some photographic accidents are lucky and end up in fantastic images. Sadly, way more of them just end up in broken gear. This photographer knocked over his camera simply by opening a collapsible reflector, and it’s caught in a video that’s pretty painful to watch.
The exact moment this photographer broke his $800 lens
What do you do when you shoot in the harsh wind? Well, photographer Mathieu Stern learned it the hard way that he should add weight to the tripod when it’s windy. Although he has quite a collection of cheap vintage lenses, the wind managed to tip over the tripod with his camera and an $800 Sony E 10-18mm f/4 lens. Since he was shooting the video at that moment, he accidentally captured the unfortunate event, too.
This man repairs the cameras and lenses that no one else can
Even when all repair services discard your camera or lens as “irreparable,” there’s still a way to repair it. Mr. David Hilos can fix all the gear others can’t (or won’t). This 49-year-old Filipino based in Singapore is communications engineer, but he is also a hobbyist camera repairman who can save your gear no matter what happened to it.
Photographers know him as “camera whisperer” and he is a miracle worker when it comes to repairing photo gear. He converts digital cameras to black and white, “transplants” pieces of one camera to the other, and even brings drowned cameras back from the dead.
Delta Air Lines caused $8,000 worth of damage to my camera gear, but they don’t care
I’m breaking tradition here, both in style and also in asking for help. Please, if you read this, share it. Link to it. Copy from it and Tweet about it and post it. Help me get the word out where, perhaps through the power of social media, a wrong can be righted. Thank you!
Why you should stop worrying about damaging your gear
Do you baby your gear and protect it from any possible harm? Or you go out there and shoot even in the harshest conditions?
Some people worry about the gear so much that they don’t even put it to use when there’s a bit of rain. It’s understandable up to some point, but it has some downsides for your photography. If you belong to this group, you may find this video from Thomas Heaton enlightening. It explains why you should stop worrying and just go out there and shoot, no matter the conditions.
This Is What It Looks Like When A Bicycle Crashes Into Your Lens; Shattering The Glass
That moment when your favorite lens meets an untimely death as your subject matter smashes into the front of it is a painful moment to have to experience. As camera lovers, most of us will probably find this video clip at least slightly painful to watch, but let it serve as a PSA for those of you who like to shoot up close to the action–you should be willing to accept things like this unfortunately occur from time to time.
Perhaps a UV filter would have added a barrier of protection between the handlebars and the glass, perhaps it wouldn’t have been enough. But, looking at the bright side of things, I suppose one may find solace in the fact the photographer didn’t get a black eye or broken nose from the camera hitting them in the face upon contact with the bike, which has also been know to happen from time to time–ouch! Plus, it appears the cyclist came out of the wreck okay, too. (So long as you’re not counting the guilt of having accidentally just broken a lens…)[Read More…]
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