Nikon N80 hits the cement driveway!

mikepry · May 1, 2005

While unloading the trunk of the car my N80 (in camera bag) hit the cement driveway! It now doesn't work. The LCD screen is garbled when I turn it on and nothing happens. The worst of it is, the roll of film from Graceland is still in it! Does anyone know if you can extract the film mechanically? Thanx.

Jeremy · May 1, 2005

Go into the darkroom, turn off the lights, open the roll back, remove film from camera, and then manually roll it back into the canister. It's really easy, I have had to do it before.

TPPhotog · May 1, 2005

OUCH Mike, that must have been one heck of a drop Jeremy has already given you the best advice and I hope it hasn't tainted your trip.

BradS · May 1, 2005

My sympathies. This has happened to me a few times too.

geraldatwork · May 1, 2005

Sorry to hear about your camera. This scares me a little as I thought my N80 was made a little better. It seems solid although obviously not as well as my Leica M2. I'll have to be careful in the future.

tbm · May 2, 2005

I dropped my Leica R8 two months ago on a marble floor. Neither it nor the 135mm lens mounted on it were damaged! I felt so fortunate and lucky!

Russ - SVP · May 2, 2005

I once dropped my FE-2 with MD-12 and 28mm attached to it, onto a concrete floor. That thing hit, HARD! It just dented the top corner by the film advance lever. I could recock the shutter, but the film wouldn't advance. My camera repair guy just removed the top cover, pounded out the small dent, and it is as good as new.

I still haven't replaced the divet in the concrete floor....

Kiron Kid

PB001 · May 2, 2005

You're not alone in the Universe

mikepry said:
While unloading the trunk of the car my N80 (in camera bag) hit the cement driveway! It now doesn't work. The LCD screen is garbled when I turn it on and nothing happens. The worst of it is, the roll of film from Graceland is still in it! Does anyone know if you can extract the film mechanically? Thanx.

Sorry to here about the dillemma, join the club, go take a look at the next thread with the title...DOH! You'll find a few of us who've had similar experiences!

Paul Berry

gnashings · May 2, 2005

I tried to clean some dust off of a focusing screen - I had no compressed air in a can, so I decided to use my airbrush compressor... well, its a low pressure jobby (but oil free)... and I kept getting closer, and closer, and closer...

Well, the dust is gone. Replaced by a gash about 10x bigger than the thing I tried to clean before my hand shook and put the nozzle ot the screen...

I know its unrelated, but sometimes it just makes you feel better to know that other people have done much dumber things!

I hope the camerea is salvageable...

Peter.

jacemanuel · May 5, 2005

mikepry said:
While unloading the trunk of the car my N80 (in camera bag) hit the cement driveway! It now doesn't work. The LCD screen is garbled when I turn it on and nothing happens. The worst of it is, the roll of film from Graceland is still in it! Does anyone know if you can extract the film mechanically? Thanx.

Too bad!

Some years ago my Nikkormat slipped out own my hand while I was crawling up a ladder to get a shot of a bunch of guys gatheried down there on the concrete floor - I tried to grap it but hit it instead, so the tempo accelerated and it hit the floor with a horrifying sound. I was 100% sure that the camera was crushed to pieces - BIG surprise when I picked it up - everything worked! I just had to wind the film. The shot the camera took all by itself showed a part of the floor and a few of the legs of the guys in the room.

Another story:

Once I saw a guy throw his Nikon F with tremendeous force to the ground - he picked it up again - looked through the viewfinder and said: ' Oh, now that damned meter works again!*

Jacques.

Dave Parker · May 5, 2005

Well at least you didn't crack the drive way!,, no really, many of us that have been around this business for a while, have had the experiance, you should be able to go in the darkroom and slowly remove the film from the camera, and roll back into the canister, as Jeremy said.

I have lost 2, 80-200mm f/2.8's over the years, one is at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and the other is at the bottom of a canyon in Glacier National Park, so unfortunately it does happen.

Let us know how the photos come out.

Dave

Nikon N80 hits the cement driveway!

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