Nice Lens Design

To continue my unfortunate story about my lens being damaged, I've shot a series of photos of my lens in the different stages. You can see how and where it was damaged, and how I managed to fix it.


Here is my Nikkor 70-200 mm 2.8 lens. From here it looks okay.


Upon closer inspection you can see that the plate that mounts the tripod adaptor is bent outwards.


With the tripod adaptor on you can see how bent the plate is.


How did my lens manage to get so bent without a scratch on my pelican case?


The construction of the lens has this metal plate that gives or bends leaving the rest of the lens alone. If you look at the equivalent Canon lens you'll notice that the adaptor is one piece that wraps around the lens. You can still remove it but the foot part is solid. Should something hit it, like the ground, the damage would go through it right to the lens. With this Nikon feature the plate acts like a crumple zone. The damage is directed at the plate made from softer material.

The replacement plate (shown here) was just under $67.00 CAN after taxes. Not bad considering the whole lens is just under $2000.00 CAN.

The plate is screwed on with standard tiny Phillips screws. To fix it, all I had to do was unscrew the bent plate and screw back on the new flat plate. Note: if you try to do this yourself make a note that the screws are of two different lengths. If replaced in the incorrect position the lens with not rotate on axis fully.


Here's the lens once the new plate had been installed.


Woo Hoo just like new!