So you say your lens is rugged? Prove it...

^^ Doh!!! " ...To use a UV filter or not? Is the hood enough for protection? ..."

Either that's a paintball, or you were divebombed by a bird....

BenJohnson wrote in post #8538268

pixel_junkie wrote in post #8538282
^^ Doh!!! " ...To use a UV filter or not? Is the hood enough for protection? ..."

I do use a UV filter on all my lenses. Not so much to protect from impact, but from dust that is common at most fields. The shot in that photo did not break the filter.

Out of the tens of thousands of paintball photos I took last year that was the only ball that directly impacted my the front element on any of my lenses, but the lens barrel(s) and camera body(s) have gotten hit quite a few times.

I think the longer hood that is on the 70-200 2.8 IS helps a lot in avoiding front element impacts. If someone were to make a crop specific hood for the 70-200 (ie. longer), I would definitely purchase one!

BenJohnson wrote in post #8538268

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I know its normal and natural to be excited by an L...but this is a little rediculous

KenjiS wrote in post #8560124
I know its normal and natural to be excited by an L...but this is a little rediculous

I see what you did there.

Spot the Sony photographer here. We were a group of photographers covering Beltane in Edinburgh, none of us had any rain protection gear, and that we found out the hard way that a Minolta DSLR and a Canon 5D classic are definitely not waterproofed. Dead as dodos.

The Sony of the guy in the picture and my 400D were fine though, as were the rest of the group's 30D/40D/Nikon kit, all the lenses, assorted flash equipment etc.

TMCCaptured wrote in post #8537116
Ed Radar...are you for real? That is one hell of a ballsy shot! Mate that is a living bear with teeth hunting for food, OMG You are my new hero. Put on a cape....put your undies on the ouside of your tights...grab the mill boots and dude take more shots like that.

The craziest photog award.

Great Work....Why Die Wondering

it was for real and happened very quickly. it's not like we planned to block the bear's access to the stream .

well.....that's not completely true.

we had a similar close encounter the day before with melissa and her cubs. but melissa was like a cow grazing on grass and i never ever felt the least bit of threat with her, and her cubs got so close to us you could tell she felt no threat from us.

anyhow when the bear approached us i did get scared....actually very scared for a few seconds.

this was her first move before she put her nose to the water and started coming toward us......

elChivo wrote in post #8537500
Not testing my camera body built but my own body built. May seem harmless for some of the experienced shooters here, but these were some of the scariest moments in my small photography career. (But I didn't realize that till I looked through the images)


1) Free living gorillas in Ruanda. The male silverback looked pretty bored till he knocked off my lens rushing past me. You can imagine how close that was. Here's an image of him:

2) A motocross event. This shot was taken @ 17mm. I could taste the dust when he landed. (Have a couple like this one, they all were scary):

3) First time shooting Icehockey. Thank you guardian angel, leading that puck 4 inches away from my head:

on that hockey puck and motorcross shot!!!!!!! Close calls for sure. I know that at 17mm when i look away from the viewfinder im always suprised at how close i actually am!!!

mine isn't i dont wanna try out any rugged stuff lol i treat my lens like a baby

mace?? nothing short of a .44 would do in that situation.

nik.hisham wrote in post #8530803
Uhm... that's a Boeing 747. The tripple 7 has a 2 4 2 , or 2 5 2 seat configuration. This one is 3 4 3. On boeings, only 747s have that config.

Was the OP of this posting (not the commenter) trying to be funny? I think it's &%^)#% sick. Get a life.

pixel_junkie wrote in post #8529511
^ Yah

OK, it's confirmed. you are sick. get some help man.

This thread was too funny to let it die...
Last week I sat outside in 20-30degrees weather at 230am in Colorado- trying to get pictures of the leonid meteor swarm(no luck)- But after one hour, there were frost on the camera and lense! I quickly packed up and went home.
Next day, it's fine.