Just how much abuse can a Canon lens take? Watch this torture test! (VIDEO)
posted Tuesday, July 9, 2013 at 1:52 PM EDT
We're all paranoid about our lenses. We clean them obsessively, put filters on them to protect the front element, and are just generally terrified of anything marring the lens elements, and making our photos look worse. But with all the engineering that goes into a camera lens, how tough do you think that glass is? Photographer Richard Choi went to extremes to find out.
The subject of this experiment is the extremely inexpensive Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, which will set you back around $125. Choi took this lens to task, first with a pen, and then moving on to the heavy pounding of a full-on hammer.
Don't worry though, as brutal as the video is, the lens was already broken — Choi was just curious about how tough the front element was. And it took until he used the claw end of the hammer to even make a scratch in the thing! Sure, a lens with a larger element probably would have been a lot less resistive to damage (don't try this on your fisheye, folks!), but that's an impressive amount of abuse it was able to take.
Now, if you think that's a brutal test, check out what these folks did to a Nikon D3S!
(via PetaPixel)