No, not pants, dear!

Just in case you though this piece was about our philandering ex-President (that’s ‘serial pant dropping’, if you don’t mind), well, I’m sorry to have to disappoint you.

Rather, this little note is about my sadly all too common habit of dropping my cameras.

The first, and still most painful drop, was of my Kodak 620 Brownie, a gift from my parents around 1958, when I was seven. After conception and birth this was the best things the old folks ever did for me. I adored that camera, my first. It was a (very) poor man’s imitation of a Rolleiflex twin lens reflex, and for some obscure reason known only to Kodak, took 620 film, in preference to the more common 120. The only difference was in the spool fittings. The negatives were 6 x 6 cm from both. Well, she came crashing down to Mother Earth one spring morning when, rather than attend boring old school, I high tailed it to Holland Park in Kensington to run a roll through her.

Now while plastic predominated in the make up of this fine piece (the only visible metal was the ‘folding’ aluminum hood for the waist level viewfinder – ‘waste level’ for obese Americans) it was no less sickening a sound when her baseplate contacted cement on the Park’s main avenue. Being British the Park had been properly paved in Victorian times and remained so to that sad day. After all, this is a nation whose Mr. Crapper gave us the flushable toilet. Tidiness is important to Empires.

The damage, it transpired, was what I would later come to call ‘non functional’ – like America’s Energy, Foreign and Fiscal policies. The chipped piece of plastic that gave its life actually did its job protecting the film chamber opening knob. That is good design. The greatest damage was to my pride.

My little half frame Pen F, the Kodak’s successor, had its moment of pain in St. James’s Park, that most civilized of London’s open spaces. There’s perhaps no finer place to be on a spring morning, provided you can actually find that scarce event – a sunny day – lost somewhere in England’s May climate.

She visited gravity soon enough, but mercifully the ground was fine British soil and the only broken bit was a viewfinder eyepiece. Must have been that first bounce and the rock …. When I sold her (believe me, no one would ever accuse the Pen F of being a ‘he’) I cheerfully disclosed the event and that actually helped seal the sale, cracked plastic and all.

Given the number of Leicas I have owned, their drop rate has actually been surprisingly low. Let’s see, at one time or another there was a IIIA, IIIC, IIIG, M3, a second M3, an M3 DS, my beloved M2, M6, SL, R4, another SL – yes, I think that’s about it. And only one drop for one of the screw mount cameras. A 9% drop rate as we SDs like to call it. (By the way, screw mount Leicas are feminine, their bayonet mount successors anything but). The M3 drop was nasty as the camera fell on the baseplate’s edge. Extrication of the Leitz (not so) removable film cartridge involved pliers. You really do not want to know. Leitz replaced the cast body and I declared bankruptcy soon after.

The digital age was no excuse to cease pursuit of Newton’s Laws. Our lovely little Olympus (at least it seemed little ten years ago) D340 had its date with destiny a few years back. Being Japanese with all those smart rubber seals and shock-absorbing casings, it picked itself up, dusted itself down and was good for the best part of another decade. All 1.3 megapixels. We finally honorably retired that charmer a couple of weeks ago. Not unreasonably, she said ‘No more!’. And if you want to extend the gender comparisons to current Japanese manufacturers’ progeny, Olympus cameras will always be feminine and Nikon’s pride could only be masculine. The rest are asexual).

The 5D and the Lumix LX-1 have been lucky so far, but that’s no guarantee. We serial droppers rarely relent. Stay tuned.

So I proudly dedicate this piece to all of you droppers out there. Like that pant dropper of yore, I feel your pain.