Recently I bought a Nikon 18-105mm VR lens really cheap, as
it had a broken mount. These lenses
often break the plastic mounts through either being dropped or forced the wrong
way when taking them off. I was thinking
about this and wondering why Nikon would make such a crazy design flaw.
Then my wife’s friend showed me her D200, the camera which I
had helped her purchase a while back.
She had given it to someone to hold on to briefly and that person had
then promptly dropped it, breaking the lens mount on the attached Nikon
18-105mm VR lens. The camera was fine,
and to my surprise, everything else on the lens was fine. No stiffness in the zoom, fully functioning
electronics and no cosmetic damage.
This got me thinking – maybe Nikon had intentionally
designed the camera so that a cheap to replace part always breaks upon impact,
thereby saving the camera and the lens from excessive shock impact. Then I remembered an incident about 10 years
ago: my mother had dropped my Nikon F90X with Tokina 28-70mm f2.8 mounted on
the front. Though the camera wasn’t
damaged, the lens barrel was bent, and the quote to fix it up was more than the
lens was worth. In other words, all the
shock had been transmitted into the internals of the lens, causing extensive
damage.
I asked my friend at Nikon about this and he said that yes,
the plastic mount was designed to break on impact. On more expensive lenses with metal mounts, a
plastic part behind the mount is designed to break for exactly the same
reason. Very interesting how a perceived
drop in quality can actually save your lens!
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| Cornwall Hotel roof - Nikon D90 with Nikon 18-200mm VR lens |
