Photographer Don Orkoskey dropped his Nikon Z6 II during an event, sending the lens and body flying in different directions. The mounting ring pulled screws out of the camera body, but after reinserting them, he found no stripped threads and the camera worked perfectly. After 30 years with Nikon, he credits the Z6 II's rugged build for surviving the impact intact.
Imagine dropping your several thousand dollar camera and watching the lens go in one direction and the camera go in the other. I don't have to imagine it after this week because that's exactly what I did. I was photographing an event. They asked me to shoot some video and asked me to do a video interview. So I reached to hand the guy a wireless mic, had my headphones on, and my cord yanked my entire rig over, smashing it on the floor. My lens and the lens adapter went in one direction. Oh no. And my camera laid on its back like it was waiting to go to that used camera store in the sky. I was in shock, but I picked everything up carefully, put it in my bag, grabbed my backup because I still had to shoot that interview, and went about photographing the rest of the event with nothing but my backup camera. When I got home several hours later, I took a look at everything and found that the Mounting ring for the camera had stayed attached to the adapter. The impact of it pulled the screws straight out of the camera. After freeing it from the adapter, which took some time, and picking up the screws that all fell out all over the floor, I was able to put that metal mounting ring back onto my camera. And to my surprise, the screws weren't stripped and everything went back together perfectly. Everything works. Autofocus is fine. The lens is fine, actually. I Found that out at the event because I needed to use that lens. I am so impressed. Now, I've always been a Nikon shooter. I bought a Nikon camera back in college and I bought lenses and just kept upgrading bodies as I needed to. But I never expected to absolutely biff a camera off of a concrete floor the way that it did this week and to have it just go, eh, a little Repair, self-repair, and boom, it's back in action. I am normally camera agnostic. I teach photography, so I deal with lots of people who have lots of different camera systems, but I am so, so glad that I'm a Nikon shooter because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that no other camera would have handled that crash the way that my Nikon Z6 II did. So thank you, Nikon. Thank you for making these heavy, monstrous cameras that can— and lenses that can take such a beating. I promise that— look, it's been almost 30 years that I've been a Nikon photographer, and I promise over the next 30 years I will do my best to never drop another camera. But if I do, I'm happy to know that it will probably survive it if I do something as stupid as what I did just the other day. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
