Hi Asher,
Wow, I think your heart must have skipped a beat when you discovered that the mirror was gone. Apparently the rear mirror, the one reflecting down towards the focus confirmation sensor, was still there.
Hope you get things fixed soon!
Cheers,
Bart
What as amazing was that I thought that the diaphragm had shut but since I don't use really tiny apertures, that didn't make sense. I next though of the cloth curtain in my Canon Eos 3 folm camera but realized the DSLR doesn't have one. Having the pieces fall out was a really shocker. I just said, "mechanical things fail eventually" the class had a laugh and I left humbled and in dread. I had the head of dance and a favorite ballerina waiting. They had delivered the costumes earlier and the mother was waiting in the hall. I could have worked with the Richoh GXR, but discovered that it has no port for a synch cord, so I'll get a shoe-mounted connection for the future. In my state of despair, I forgot I also had, in reserve, a 1DII with a Zeiss 28-85mm Varrio-sonnar waiting for my attention. However, under pressure of things, my mind was set to the full frame and did not opon that black bag with the always full charged spare batteries. It's the amazing sight of glass and diaphragm being delivered from the mouth of a camera, that it numbed my brain to even my ownership of the 1DII. That's how things can happen! So I proceeded with the blind 5D! Amaziungly the focus confirmation for MF of the 24MMTSE work fine.
I was shocked to see that the back of the 24mm TSE is an utterly open deep well of electronic boards! It was like a lover falling and getting a minor wound and then one being able to see inside her chest not flesh and blood, but circuit boards and multicolored wires! That's how I felt. Why there's not some rubber diaphragm around the rear optic of the 24 mm TSE, to keep out dust, I cannot fathom!
Bart, is yours open like that at the back of the lens?
I am packing up 2 cameras and two lenses and I'm off to CPS Irvine. I still have a major gala performance shoot on tuesday! Could use the Canon 1DII. That's still pretty nice!
Asher