The Mounting Bracket

Rico's cat eyes my scrambled eggs

This morning I had gotten up to get over to Rico's by 10am. Rico is a guy that has the occasional computer laptop or desktop that needs fixing. Installation of software, new hardware conflicts or something weird taking over the computers. As a good friend I usually see what I can do to help.

Today's job was pretty easy. It was to introduce Patsy, Rico's wife, to the fun world of digital cameras and photoshop. As a reward for helping them out they fed me a nice breakfast/lunch. Shortly after I went over to James' place to borrow his van.

James being in L.A. loaned me his van so I could travel out to Nikon. This was a very nice gesture as Nikon is about a 2.5 hour commute to Mississauga via TCC combined with the Mississauga transit (and that's just one way!).

The hope was that I could get my 70-200mm 2.8 lens fixed. As it turns out, while coming back from Heathrow, the mounting bracket on it got damaged during the flight. I'm still not sure how as it was in a pelican case with a lot of padding. Since the case had no external damage I can only guess that it was during the inspection at customs that it broke. This deduction is strengthened by the fact that my case was open and all my gear was moved around within the pelican case when I took my luggage off the conveyor belt. They didn't even close the case properly!

On the bright side when looking closely at the lens, Nikon in their infinite wisdom, designed the lens with a small plate that attaches to the rest of the lens with four small phillips screws. This piece that is used to mount to a tripod slides onto this plate.

The plate is made with softer metal than the rest of the body so it's designed to bend first keeping the rest of the lens intact. Sort of like a crumple zone for your lens.

to be continued...