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This $11,000 lens is exactly why you don’t check camera gear when flying

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It should be pretty common knowledge by now that you don’t check your delicate camera gear when flying. Ok, sometimes, you might no choice, especially if you fly Delta. But if the ability is there to carry it in your hand luggage, then do it. This was an expensive lesson to learn for one lady who recently brought her Leica M10 & 50mm f/0.95 Noctilux to Leica Store Manchester for repair.

The $10,995 lens has been smashed, and the $6,895 camera now won’t even turn on. Leica Store Manchester told PetaPixel, “She had only had the camera and lens for 2 weeks”.

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This man repairs the cameras and lenses that no one else can

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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.

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Microsoft’s Surface Pro scores 0 out of 10 on reparability test

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Microsoft’s Surface Pro laptop definitely has some good sides, but what can you expect when it breaks? Unfortunately, on the repairability test by iFixit, this stylish laptop scores far from impressive: zero. Seems that it would be pretty difficult (or even impossible) to open and repair it, and the guys from iFixit tear it down and demonstrate all the possible difficulties you may encounter if you want to repair this laptop.

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Canon puts out service notice for the 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM lens after autofocus issues detected

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Canon’s 24-105mm f/4L lens has become a staple amongst Canon users. Whether pro or hobbyist it’s the perfect balance between quality, versatility and price. Its successor, the 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM, though, seems to be having a few teething troubles. Imaging resource mentioned the service notice a couple of weeks ago. But it wasn’t corroborated by any other Canon sources, and was quickly removed from the Canon Philipines website

Canon USA have now announced that certain examples of this lens exhibit “an AF operation-related malfunction”. This isn’t quite a recall just yet, because Canon don’t seem to have come up with a viable solution to the problem. At the moment, they are making “preparations”, and as soon as they’re complete, they’ll tell owners what they need to do.

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This man has spent almost 60 years repairing analogue cameras

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On Via Paolo Lomazzo, in Milan, sits an unassuming shopfront. On the window are the words “Riparazioni Macchine Fotografiche” (“Camera Repair”) printed in simple bold letters. This is the workshop of 76 year old Gian Luigi Carminati, a man who has spent his entire working life repairing cameras.

Armed with little more than a set of screwdrivers and a lot of patience, Carminati has repaired countless cameras in his time. A technician more than a photographer, he has made some interesting observations on photography over the years. In this two minute short Master of Camera, from filmmaker David Drills, he talks about some of those insights.

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Tearing down the $2,200 Nikon 105mm f/1.4

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When I see the phrase “for those of you following along at home” in a teardown article, I know it’s going to be a good one. This is especially so when it’s the first public teardown of such a new and expensive lens. Nikon announced the 105mm f/1.4E back in July to much fanfare. Many photographers who managed to get their hands on one instantly fell in love.

So, what’s caused this teardown now? Is there an issue with these lenses? Nope, it’s simply maintenance and cleaning. For most of us, a few specks of dust aren’t an issue, but for gear hire company LensRentals, the equipment has to look like brand new each time it goes out to the next client. This means regular teardowns and cleaning of their equipment.

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How to DIY repair a damaged tripod thread in your camera

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Tripod threads in the bottom of cameras and other devices are usually pretty solid. I’ve got cameras that are decades old that still have perfectly functional ones. But, I’ve also had a couple of adapters and gadgets where they haven’t survived so well. Quality control isn’t what it once was, and the number of devices containing 1/4-20″ sockets has soared compared to only a few years ago. So, failures are far more likely these days.

Repairs like this can be a pain. If you can’t connect your camera to your tripod, slider, gimbal or other support system, you’re screwed. Sending to a service centre for repair can be costly and take a few weeks to get your gear back. Fortunately, filmmaker Tom Antos has put up a video to show us how we can repair our own using a readily available DIY tripod screw repair kit.

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Watch a GoPro Hero 5 taken apart piece by piece (then put together again)

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When you were a kid, you may have toyed around with taking things apart. Then, putting them back together again. For me, more often than not, the put-back-together part ended with some spare parts. The lack of which did not seem to impact the assembled piece though.

Watch the GoPro Hero 5 undergoing the same procedure.  JerryRigEverything takes a brand new GoPro Hero 5 apart. Usually, those videos are made so you can learn how to replace damaged parts, but sadly, GoPro does not sell spare parts for the Hero5. You’d need another dead Hero 5 for savaging the parts. Who knows, maybe GoPro will end up selling parts, or you can Frankenstein 2 dead GoPros into a live one.

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Canon told me my 24-70mm f/2.8L II was beyond repair. I asked for it back and fixed it myself

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I was shooting some images of the icebergs on the black sand beach by the Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon, Iceland with a rental EF 24-70mm F2.8L II. Iceland is notorious for being windy, and while I was shooting there was blowing winds carrying ocean spray and water splashes all over me and my camera + lens.

Unfortunately, it seemed that sea water got into the lens either from the autofocus switch, the “weather seal”, or the extended barrel when you zoom out. After a short while, the lens stopped autofocusing and I got errors about connecting to the camera.

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“Specifications have nothing to do with quality” – Insights from a camera tech + the best lens teardown video you ever saw

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Mike Kusak at FixyourCamera.org is a self-confessed electronics nut.  As a camera tech with over a decade of professional experience Mike has worked on some of the most advanced cameras and lenses available.

In the first video of what looks set to become a valuable archive of reference material, Mike dismantles, repairs and rebuilds a Tokina 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens.

After seeing the video we were intrigued, so DIYP had a chat with Mike about his work, the website, YouTube and his hopes for their future.

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