Dropped Camera Damaged Lens

[Geoff Port]

Hi all,
I kicked the leg of my tripod the other evening while taking sunset shots. Down went the camera with my Tamron 24-70 f2.8 attached. THe lens hit the "soft" ground on the lens hood and took the full force of the fall. THe lens now has slight movement laterally but none longtitudinally. There doesn't seem to be any effect on the workings of the lens but I now don't trust it to focus correctly.
Question: To whom do I send it for checking?

Is there someone in Australia that can give it the once over or do I need to return it to Tamron?

Geoff Portbury

[bricat]

Geoff, Why not take some test shots to see if it working correctly? I would THINK any camera repair shop should be able to check a lens. cheers Brian

[arthurking83]

Like bricat said .. just check it yourself.
Shouldn't be too hard.

Things to look for are out of alignment lens elements.
Shoot a wall with come texture and set the lens to f/4 or f/5.6 .. and focus using liveview(if you have it) on a few points scattered across the frame.

i.e. 1st test use the centre focus area .. note how sharp one of the frame is RELATIVE to the other side of the frame. so you're not looking for sharpness per se .. you'll be looking for variations on whether one side of the lens is sharper than the other.
do the same test with focus points at the sides of the frame too to see if they're relatively balanced.

Seeing that the lens hit the soft ground on the lens hood .. I'd say that damage may be minimal to nothing(going with your description that the lens seems to work ok).
I have the Tammy 24-70 myself and the lens hood quality seems quite strong(compared to many of their past offerings), so it may have absorbed the impact well enough.

[Geoff Port]

First, sorry for the delayed reply. Life!
Thanks to you both for your advice.
I have been using the lens quite a bit since the mishap and nothing nasty seems to have occured Landscapes look OK. All the shots of my sons 21st last weekend look good so maybe I dodged a bullet.
I took the lens into a well known camera shop in one of our regional cities recently and they said that for $80 they would send it to Perth for testing then attempted to entice me into a trade in for the Canon equivelent.
Thanks again guys much appreciated.