Minoltas tough?

Twice over the last forty years I have dropped an XD-11 onto concrete from 5 feet. The first time with a 500mm Rokkor mirror lens, and the second with a Rokkor 135mm MD In both cases, nothing was damaged! Was Minolta stuff designed to be so tough? Or was I lucky twice?

You need a sample larger than 2 to make any kind of statistically significant conclusion. Manufacturers balance robustness of construction against cost, and Minolta would have taken exactly the same view here as Nikon, Canon, Pentax and anyone else making consumer SLRs. I think you were probably just lucky. Plenty of people will have dropped their Minolta camera and not had the same outcome as you.

Try dropping it from increasing heights till you find the limit;)

Try dropping it from increasing heights till you find the limit;)

Dropping from increasing height won't answer the question. If you drop from a very high distance it will break. The OP question is would the camera can always take a 5ft drop or it was because the OP just got lucky twice? To answer that question the OP should drop the camera at 5ft hundreds of times. Just like Colin O said 2 isn't statistically significant.

Saying you dropped a camera and it survived is comparable to bragging about catching a two-headed carp downstream of Three Mile Island. Both are a product of luck and lack of due diligence.

Saying you dropped a camera and it survived is comparable to bragging about catching a two-headed carp downstream of Three Mile Island. Both are a product of luck and lack of due diligence.

But if you drop it 100 times and it survives how sure are you that it would survive the 101 time? I bet you'll be quite sure.

If you have dropped a camera 100 times, please don't ask to borrow one of mine ;)

 

I've dropped a camera once in 60 years, a Nikon D2x, at a wedding no less. Fortunately it fell to a carpeted floor and only the ground glass was dislodged. That was the last time I used a power supply attached to my belt. I've also had two lenses fall from an unsecured case. The first one needed a new focusing cam (Nikon 17-35/2.8) and the second had to be replaced (Zeiss Batis 40/2). Both times, the lens fell about 6" to a hard floor.

 

I see your point, though. A single success doesn't establish a trend. (Chicago Cubs excepted. One win is a "streak" and two is a path to the World Series.)

Edited May 21, 2021 by Ed_Ingold

If you have dropped a camera 100 times, please don't ask to borrow one of mine ;)

 

I've dropped a camera once in 60 years, a Nikon D2x, at a wedding no less. Fortunately it fell to a carpeted floor and only the ground glass was dislodged. That was the last time I used a power supply attached to my belt. I've also had two lenses fall from an unsecured case. The first one needed a new focusing cam (Nikon 17-35/2.8) and the second had to be replaced (Zeiss Batis 40/2). Both times, the lens fell about 6" to a hard floor.

 

I see your point, though. A single success doesn't establish a trend. (Chicago Cubs excepted. One win is a "streak" and two is a path to the World Series.)

I never did drop any of my cameras lucky me. But I think if I did whatever camera it was it would be damaged. I am not going to find out for sure. Cameras are my toys I take good care of them. I do drop my tools often but cameras are not tools for me.

Most manual cameras are pretty tough since they are all metal. Nothing can really happen to them (except maybe a dent or two...) unless they have sensitive electronics inside the body. I once dropped a Canon 7D (digital) from about 3 feet on hard cement . At first it looked like the camera was OK. No bumps, no dents, but later I found out I had to replace the entire mother board. On another occasion I dropped a one month old Canon 30D (digital) on hard cement from about 4 feet and except for a slight smudge on the bottom plate of the camera, no damage was done ?

The body materiel doesn't really mean a lot - it is possible to crack a cast alloy body, while a plastic shell can adsorb some impacts.Of more importance are the internal mechanisms - swinging mirror assemblies, rangefinder prisms, these don't cope too well with sudden deceleration. The orientation at the time of impact could greatly influence the outcome.

 

In modern digital terms, IBIS might not react too well to suddenly being slammed against the limits of it's travel...

I was never a particular fan of Minolta, but we had a lot of them in our equipment bins and they all were reliable under the cruelest of "tragedy of the commons" use.

"(Chicago Cubs excepted. One win is a "streak" and two is a path to the World Series.)"

Oh, how true!

The body materiel doesn't really mean a lot - it is possible to crack a cast alloy body, while a plastic shell can adsorb some impacts.Of more importance are the internal mechanisms - swinging mirror assemblies, rangefinder prisms, these don't cope too well with sudden deceleration. The orientation at the time of impact could greatly influence the outcome.

 

In modern digital terms, IBIS might not react too well to suddenly being slammed against the limits of it's travel...

Electronics doesn't make a camera fragile. I do agree electronics can fail without warning but they can last much longer and endure abuses better than mechanical parts. IBIS damage would be a mechanical damage. You can see something purely electronic like a memory card is extremely durable.