[Leica] Never hold a dogleash with your elbow while changing lenses

[leica at screengang.com (Didier Ludwig)]

Seems to be a bad week for some LUGgers like Daniel and me. 

Was at the Rheinfall in Schaffhausen with one of my sons and our dog. Had 
the dogleash in the left ellbow and wanted to change two lenses, a 15mm 
Heliar and a 50mm collapsible Summicron. Following Murphy's law the dog 
pulled the leash in the very wrong moment, and both lenses dropped off my 
hands to the stoney ground, at the border of the Rhein river. The heavier 
Summicron stayed in front of me, the lighter Heliar rolled over the stones 
toward the water. With a brilliant goalkeeper dive roll parade my son could 
catch it before it reached the river.

No glass was touched. But the brass bayonet mount of the Summicron has a 
tough ding which needs to be filed off. That's less bad than what happened 
to the Aluminium body of the Heliar. The inbuilt hood wing was slightly 
bended toward the lens, and both aperture and focus rings were strongly hit 
and are now almost unusable. I can focus when the aperture ring is at wide 
open, but as soon as I stop down, the focus ring is completely blocked. The 
aperture ring itself needs much power to move.

I have now fixed it to f5.6-8 (sweet spot of that lens) and almost at 
infinity - a setting that works in 90% of the shots I make with it.

Maybe I'll disassemble it one day. Will see.

Didier