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It's a shame that Lens Rentals had to suffer such material loss, but that report is absolute gold-plated first-hand evidence for my perennial debates with other
by dingaling 9y ago
It's a shame that Lens Rentals had to suffer such material loss, but that report is absolute gold-plated first-hand evidence for my perennial debates with other photographers who insist that they don't need Solar protection for eclipses.
"But I took a landscape shot at midday with the Sun in frame and it didn't melt my sensor". The difference being the length of exposure and the concentrations of energy.
- fencepost 9y agoThey have an in-house repair shop that dealt with most or all of it, and they charge the customer for the cost of the repair. From the comments the fact that they don't gouge on repairs is one reason some folks use them.
- matthewrudy 9y agoHow do you fix a burnt cmos sensor? I feel like canon would charge you near enough the full replacement price.
- chrissnell 9y agoI wish the blog post had talked more about that. I'm curious about their repair process. What capabilities do they have in house? Can they replace a broken sensor?
- matthewrudy 9y agoI know about 12 years ago I blew the firewire connection on my video camera (Canon xm2), and to fix it they would have to replace the full board. So I feel like they don't make them repairable.
- Faaak 9y agoYet with a heat gun its an easy fix. It depends on their expertise
- fencepost 9y agoThere are a lot of things that a professional repair shop focused on a particular type of equipment may be able to do that aren't practical for anyone else - including manufacturer repair facilities. Louis Rossman is a bit entertaining on this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ocF_hrr83Oc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ocF_hrr83Oc
- giobox 9y agoThey blog a lot about their repairs process in general. It's primarily mechanical damage to lenses they appear to normally deal in - the focusing rings, aperture mechanisms or realigning optical elements dislodged by drops and so on. An embedded CCD/CMOS sensor is probably a full logic board replacement I'd assume, as opposed to some kind of sensor only replacement, given it's almost always soldered on.
- gambiting 9y agoYou fix it yourself, most likely using a sensor from another broken camera.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 9y agoThey might send that back to the manufacturer to fix. In the Reddit thread, they talked about replacing the aperture module for some of the lenses; that's just a simple swap, along with cleaning the adjacent elements.
- sdwisely 9y agoI'd imagine it's a fairly common replacement. I've seen event photographers do it quite a few times putting their cameras near lasers.
- cookiecaper 9y agoI'm only a reluctant amateur photographer, but my understanding is that damaged sensors cannot be repaired, and that manufacturers will quote repair costs totalling or exceeding the cost of an entirely new camera.
- userbinator 9y agoA quick search online reveals plenty of sources of replacement sensors, at a fraction of the cost of the complete camera.
- matthewrudy 9y agoThere do seem to be people selling 7d mark ii cmos sensors for ~$300, while a new body would cost ~$1100. Someone posted a video of replacing the sensor on the old 7d (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udonzfGdW0Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udonzfGdW0Y) Seems it eventually worked for him, after several attempts to adjust the position to get correct focus, but if you read the comments on the video there are many people who've messed up their camera trying to do this. Might be fun to try though.
- csomar 9y ago> And of the things returned, we were equally impressed with our customer-base, and their guilt and owning up to the damage. I thought the renters would be paying for it?
- tedunangst 9y agoThey still probably lose out on some revenue until a replacement is in stock. Having a working lens is always better for business than getting reimbursed to buy a replacement lens. (That's the nature of the business, though.)
- nateroling 9y agoHe mentions in the article they rented out “thousands” of lenses. I’m guessing the few lenses they have to repair because of this is barely over their normal repair load.
- hug 9y agoLensRentals do all possible repairs internally, so I suspect that the downtime on an expensive lens like that is minimal if possible. Roger mentioned on the photography subreddit that the aperture replacement was a $200 part and 3 to 4 hours -- it only took so long because it was that tech's first time replacing that part. https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/6xg8a7/lens_rentals_shows_some_of_their_rental_camera/dmga5m0/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/6xg8a7/lens_re...
- monochromatic 9y agoStill, lots of people might feign ignorance.
- selectodude 9y agoYou can feign ignorance. It doesn't change the fact that the lens has a burn hole on it now.
- 9y ago
- monochromatic 9y agoPresumably the rental place isn't planning to just eat the loss. They have the renters' credit card numbers...
- patcheudor 9y agoYup, it all came down to how long the camera was pointed at the sun. I took a bunch of photos of the eclipse including this HDR shot with a Leica 280mm lens and Sony A7R with no filter whatsoever & without any damage to my lens or camera. The thing is, it took seconds to take and I made sure the camera was only pointed at the sun for brief moments: https://www.flickr.com/photos/patcheudor/35886777354/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/patcheudor/35886777354/ I'm assuming the damage Lens Rentals saw was from people who were trying to do time-lapse.
- romanhn 9y agoOff topic, but I think here's another image of the same airplane, also taken in Idaho: https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/6v62nl/plane_crossing_todays_eclipse/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/6v62nl/plane_cros...
- patcheudor 9y agoThat one would have been taken about 15 miles or so to the southwest of my location.
- Stratoscope 9y agoThat turned out to be a fake. https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6v6y1k/ https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/6v6y1k/
- dboreham 9y agoI was in North Eastern Idaho and there is a similar looking contrail visible in my wide angle shots at totality so if the point of image capture happened to be just right it would be possible to have it in the frame with the sun.
- rangibaby 9y agoOh man that's hilarious considering this: https://petapixel.com/2016/01/29/nikon-awards-prize-to-badly-shopped-photo-hilarity-ensues/ https://petapixel.com/2016/01/29/nikon-awards-prize-to-badly...
- heartbreak 9y agoJust to clarify, there’s no concentration of energy involved with the eclipse itself. The concentration involved is no different than setting a leaf on fire with a magnifying glass on a regular day. The sun isn’t a garden hose. Putting something in front of it doesn’t make the edges more intense.
- Gracana 9y ago> The concentration involved is no different than setting a leaf on fire with a magnifying glass on a regular day. That's what they're saying. Zooming in on the sun vs the sun happening to be in-frame.
- xsmasher 9y agoAre you saying zooming in on the sun makes damage more likely? Wouldn't zooming in spread the sun's energy across more of the sensor? Same energy, larger area = less intensity.
- grahn 9y agoThe irradiance is determined by the aperture, which is measured relative to the focal length. So with e.g. f/2 you get the same heating of a given area of the sensor regardless of the focal length (i.e. "zoom"). Put differently, longer lenses typically also have bigger absolute apertures, collecting incident light from a larger cross-section. This compensates for the fact that a given solid angle of incident light is spread over a larger area of the sensor.
- resoluteteeth 9y agoDingaling is talking about the light being concentrated on certain areas of the sensor. Because the total/average brightness is low, the exposure ends up being much longer then at normal conditions, causing damage to the areas where the light is concentrated. Under normal conditions, the light will be less concentrated on certain spots, so even though there is much more light in total, the camera will choose an appropriate exposure that will prevent damage to the sensor.
- oliwarner 9y agoWhen you hire a lens, you're contractually and personally on the hook for anything not insured. So yes, somebody owes LR a considerable amount of money for repairing or replacing that £11,000 600mm lens. The admin of dealing with this crap is built into the rental price. A well looked after lens doesn't depreciate fast.
- Hannah7777 9y agoYeah it`s Possible. .....Anybody can earn 250$+ daily... You can earn from 6000-12000 a month or even more if you work as a full time job... ====http://www.bosscyber.com http://www.bosscyber.com
- wlesieutre 9y agoWorth noting that on the 600mm with melted iris, the user did use a solar filter. Unfortunately for the lens, the 600mm lens's drop-in filter slot is behind the iris. So the camera was fine, the lens not so much. http://shuttermuse.com/canon-drop-in-filter-guide/ http://shuttermuse.com/canon-drop-in-filter-guide/
- ars 9y agoWhy do they even make a drop in filter rated for the sun, if it's going to damage the lens? What use could you make of this filter?
- nullc 9y agoThere is a drop in filter holder that takes 52mm filters designed to screw on to the front of lenses.
- throwanem 9y ago(For those unfamiliar - it works this way because the objective element of this lens is far larger than anyone makes filters for. 52mm is a very common diameter, so placing a drop-in mount further along in the focal path means you can use a wide range of filters with minimal cost and inconvenience, and to identical effect - except, of course, in the rare case where you have enough energy coming down the barrel to damage the iris.)
- triggermuch 9y agohey astronomy was a wicked hard class and i still dont get it, so maybe this will be a very expensive lesson for them. sadly it probably wont be the right one but that is life. you know that there had to be a couple of smug asshats that were brought down a peg, thats pretty funny. I missed the eclipse.