Don’t d d d don’t drop it!

Posted on by

It might seem conventional wisdom that a bundle of glass, no matter how robust or “pro” it may have been built, should NOT be dropped.

On pavement.

Several times.

Especially not one that weighs over three pounds and costs two grand to replace.  (even though I paid $1600 brand new–what’s up with that?!)

So over several years I’ve repeatedly dropped my most used lens, and now it’s time to repair it.  I was shooting birds on the Willamette the other day and realized that things weren’t looking sharp until f11.  Having had the lens for about seven years now, I know what a properly working specimen is capable of and this isn’t it.

I brought it to the local authorized repair shop, Associated Camera Repair (more on why that’s the only place that can get parts later), but they looked at it (for a couple weeks) and decided they couldn’t do anything for it.  The lens must just be as good as it gets.

So I took it home and this morning did a little test to prove to myself I’m not crazy (at least in this instance) and illustrate what I think to be the issue.  I think that after dropping it enough, something inside is now out of alignment.  How’d I test this?  Observe:

updownsmear

Notice the smeary-ness, and how it’s on the top edge or the bottom edge?  This is as close to the center of the frame as I could get.  This shouldn’t me asymmetrical at the edge of the frame, let alone center of the frame.

Here’s the test procedure:  The 70-200mm f/2.8 VR (v1) (oh yea, that’s the lens we’re talking about here, sorry) has a tripod mount directly on the lens, which rotates on a collar.  So all I had to do was firmly mount it on a tripod, shoot, rotate and shoot again.  AF was off between shots and VR was off.

So I’m concluding that yes, this is broken, something’s out of line, and it needs to be fixed.  Google didn’t turn up anything, so I’m going to post about my repair experience here.  I suspect that this will require a trip to Nikon USA (not excited about that!), but I’m going to try all the other local shops first.  I’ll report back here as things progress!

(about the title: I’m referencing a G Love and the Special Sauce song, which I seem to get stuck in my head whenever it’s time to bring something in for repair)