My worst accident happened almost 30 years ago. I was shooting drag
racing from the starting line with my Speed Graphic on a tripod. I was
doing one second exposures of funny cars sitting at the starting line
to get a nice burn in on the flames coming out of the header pipes.
After the funny cars ran, there was an exhibition run between two jet
powered dragsters. You can guess what happened. Yep, I took a short
break and while I was sitting on the guardrail, the exhaust velocity of
the jet blew my tripod over. It ruined the rangefinder mechanism in my
speed graphic :-). Again, the story has a happy ending. I went to work
the next year for Hearst Publishing in New York. They paid for
maintenance on my cameras. So I took the SG to Norm Frosier's New York
Camera shop, and he rebuilt the rangefinder mechanism and did a
complete CLA on camera and lens. It works beautifully to this day.
Paul
On Aug 6, 2005, at 9:06 AM, Frantisek wrote:
Saturday, August 6, 2005, 1:02:56 PM, Tom wrote:
Anyone else have a fall story and good news after.??
The first one is somewhat old, when I was just beginning, a strap tore
and a Praktica with a 500/8 1.5Kg USSR mirror lens landed on rocks at
my feet. The lens was unscathed, it was a monster of a lens, while the
lovely Praktica lost its metering (otherwise worked fine). I bought my
first Pentax, the K2DMD after that :)
Second was more funny, I was shooting in a church and while changing
lenses, an old and again 1.5Kg heavy 180mm/2.8 Sonnar somehow fell
down from
my hands onto hard stonetiled floor, in a moment of complete silence.
Everybody turned heads to me :-) I was afraid that I had broken the
floor! Of course, the lens was again almost unscathed (just required a
little hammering of the lens mount back to shape <g>), and continues
to work flawlessly to this day. I bought a 70-210/3.5 after that ;)
so far, nothing more (pats on wood) :)
Good light!
fra
