Have to laugh

Yesterday I had planned on shooting all day at different locations to capture some fall beauty.
I have been shooting a lot of video as well lately, which I really love to do.

So, I am at one of the locations, a bridge in the Hudson Highlands. I do not want to carry my pack, so I take the video cam, camera/70-200 and the 16-35.

As I left my car, I decide to climb the mountain abutting the bridge. On my way down I need both hands to navigate the descent (very steep), and the video camera pops out of my pocket and falls down the mountainside, bouncing like a slinky. I am thinking, "that is it for this video camera".
Well, I actually found it down a ways. It was scratched and banged up, and the lens ring was bent out of shape.
It worked fine and I finished the day with it - I was pleasantly surprised that plastic camera could take such a beating.

Time to burn some incense to the Camera Fairy!

buy a lottery ticket, this could be your time

Frank, I used to burn a lot of incense...
Rick - I have les luck with lotto tickets than I did with the flying video cam..


As it was making its way down the mountain, for some reason I did not get upset. I was thinking that although it was only a month old, I had already gotten so much use out of it that I was content.
I never purchase equipment hoping for resale, I do for the use of it.

I just thought how if I dropped my camera in that same situation, I'd be fined for destruction of park property... Let's just say that it's the equivalent of a Nokia 3310!

pbelarge wrote in post #15133166
Yesterday I had planned on shooting all day at different locations to capture some fall beauty.
I have been shooting a lot of video as well lately, which I really love to do.

So, I am at one of the locations, a bridge in the Hudson Highlands. I do not want to carry my pack, so I take the video cam, camera/70-200 and the 16-35.

As I left my car, I decide to climb the mountain abutting the bridge. On my way down I need both hands to navigate the descent (very steep), and the video camera pops out of my pocket and falls down the mountainside, bouncing like a slinky. I am thinking, "that is it for this video camera".
Well, I actually found it down a ways. It was scratched and banged up, and the lens ring was bent out of shape.
It worked fine and I finished the day with it - I was pleasantly surprised that plastic camera could take such a beating.

And yet every time the topic of build quality comes up, the "experts" denigrate plastic bodies. Modern plastics technology is truly amazing, even some of the relatively inexpensive stuff.

Preeb wrote in post #15135378
Modern plastics technology is truly amazing, even some of the relatively inexpensive stuff.

No kidding. I keep trying to cut up my other half's credit card but it is indestructible.

Dan Marchant wrote in post #15136320
No kidding. I keep trying to cut up my other half's credit card but it is indestructible.

lol.

I burned the wife's card, but like a Phenix it rises from the ashes.

jack lumber wrote in post #15136459
I burned the wife's card, but like a Phenix it rises from the ashes.

Or to be more precise, one phone call and two workdays later it rises from the mailbox, lol.

Kolor-Pikker wrote in post #15137215
Or to be more precise, one phone call and two workdays later it rises from the mailbox, lol.

It's karmic consumer re-incarnation.

Preeb wrote in post #15135378
And yet every time the topic of build quality comes up, the "experts" denigrate plastic bodies. Modern plastics technology is truly amazing, even some of the relatively inexpensive stuff.

yes, all the youtube videos of things falling from great distances and not breaking, even a DSLR camera from 20,000 feet

I had a kodak camera come off the back of a car on a track day. Hit the ground at about 80, took a tumble with the mount and all and kept recording. It actually recorded until it ran out of batter. A course worker found it and brought it back in for me after it recorded an entire other session while on its side with a few near misses.

Now I just looked at my GoPro the other day and then I sneezed from across the room and out of spite it decided to cease to function.

Plastic devices are rather durable. Think how a heavier, metal bodied device would have fared. I think plastic is more durable because the shell can give lessening the impact where metal will jar the device more upon impact and possibly dent causing damage to whatever got pocked while the plastic would go back to its normal position.

It's the difference between a magnesium casting mold designers best effort to make a metal case as thin and lightweight as possible and still be usable and a plastic injection die makers efforts to create a case thats as strong as he can make it without making it so thick that it takes up space needed for the internal bits.

My Saturn has 200K on it without a door ding, plastic door skins! But the gaps necessary for the expansion rate of a plastic doors vs. a metal door frame makes the fit and finish pretty ugly. It's tomatoes/potatoes, nothing beets the old Nikon F body and the AE's, but plastic is definitely easier to produce and much more resilient, for sure.