Dropped one of my lenses

[Chris Dodkin]

Tip to self, don't put expensive sh!t on the edge of a table...

My 17-35mm f2.8L lens (attached to my 5D2) took a trip onto a carpeted concrete floor

Nice thud as it landed, lens first.

Camera seems fine - but the zoom on the lens was now very stiff

No sign of external damage though, so figured the impact buggered something in the zoom barrel.

I am lucky to have Canon's West Coast service center near me in Irvine CA - so i dropped in with the lens, and flashed my CPS members card (Canon Professional Services).

Last time I visited this facility was with a dead 1D MKII, and my CPS membership had got me a new shutter mech fitted for free

The lady was suitably concerned with my damaged lens, but then dropped a real bombshell - 'Your lens is no longer covered by Canon service - it's too old'...

WTF? I paid a whole lot of money for a pro L lens (when it was released), and now it's 'too old'.. which I guess means it's been superseded by newer models, and they're 'encouraging' me to upgrade.

The current version of this lens is $1600!!!

Undeterred, I drove 5 miles up the freeway to my local independent Canon CPS repair specialist - H and K Camera Service.

They are a Canon authorized service center, and only handle Canon equipment.

Amazing place, workstations with techs working on every imaginable camera and lens from Canon.

They took my lens for a free check, then called me back next day to let me know the barrel focus mech needed replacement - I got a discount for being a CPS member, and I can pick it up on Tuesday - Under $200 for a full repair, and they'll tune the focus for my 5D2.

So crisis somewhat averted, and I'll report back when I collect the lens.

I checked the rest of my lenses on the Canon CPS website, and it looks like my 28-70 f2.8L, and 300 f2.8L are also 'no longer covered'.

If I need to service these lenses, I'll be using H&K again it seems.

Amazing - never figured the lenses would outlive their support from Canon

 

[Paul Lange]

I find that sort of attitude to customers terrible. It's enough to turn you away from a brand. I find that Apple has a similar attitude which is all designed to extract more money from customers as they have to upgrade regularly as support is stopped on older but still perfectly usable items. Its one of the reasons why despite using Macs at work for over 10 years I will never own one personally.

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Collected the lens yesterday - feels like new, very smooth zoom - and they gave it a good clean too!

$250 all done with tax etc

Still cheaper than a new one!

Here's the lens, and the barrel assembly they replaced (They were good enough to give me the dead parts!)

Quite some piece of engineering - and fascinating to see what's inside of a lens.

 

[Hamish Gill]

can you see where its broken?
looks like quite a good and solid bit of stuff to break!
i guess thats the problem with the quality hardware ... the better it is the heavier it is, the heavier it is, the harder it falls

 

[Chris Dodkin]

It actually bent!

The zoom would still work, but it was binding as the helical mechanism moved in and out.

Apparently it's a common issue with a dropped lens - or at least this design of zoom mechanism.

 

[Hamish Gill]

im going to consider my self pretty lucky to have dropped my camera, lens and flash most of the way down a stair case and only broke the flash a little bit then ..