While attempting to record myself making a dried chili harissa paste last night, I had a bit of an accident when I turned off my camera, resulting in my tripod becoming unstable, and the camera falling down on the counter. When I went to turn it upright, I immediately panicked and thought I had cracked my actual lens. The glass on the outside had two cracks all the way across the circle. It took a while for me to calm down, but Chris mentioned if I could remove the UV filter on the lens… which suddenly made me remember that what I originally perceived to be cracked glass was actually the $6 UV lens filter and NOT the actual lens. It’s funny when the UV filter stays on your lens full time, and then you forget that these two things are actually separate.

We tried everything we could to get the lens filter off, from putting it in the freezer and turning it with a rubber band to tapping the sides of it for 10 minutes straight. Nothing worked. After having it inspected at B&H Photo today, they told me that the angle at which the lens fell resulted it the filter threads getting pushed in further, so the only way to get this removed would be to break the glass and have someone with the proper tools remove it at Photo Tech.

So the good news is that I did not ruin my lens and just broke a $6 lens filter. The bad news is that I’m not sure if Photo Tech will be open tomorrow given all the COVID-19 madness… and, we just received a message that B&H Photo would be closing for the remainder of the month in light of Coronavirus.

I need to be able to film cooking videos during this period to stay sane, otherwise I will feel like this period is a total waste indoors.