Thursday 21 July 2011

How to drown a camera

Bad case of bum spray

I've killed two Canon Ixux cameras in the last six years - all through horrible abuse at either my hands or the kids. I thought the third one had kicked the bucket today.

It's been pouring down in Sydney for the last few days. I think we got 4 inches in the last 24 hours in our area. It certainly feels like it - the lawns are swamps, the road side gutters everywhere are overflowing and the canals are running fast with run off. Every time I rode through a gutter, I had that icky feeling of cold water running over one of my feet - that's how deep the water can get.

I've been happy to wear a spray jacket on my rides, as it isn't that cold - it was 12-15 degrees today, so wearing a heavy jacket would have me soaked with sweat from the inside.

Although the spray jacket is pretty water resistant, it seems the pocket that I keep the camera in isn't. Or my saturated glove squeezed a bucket of water into the camera when I took each photo. When I got home, the camera looked a little "fogged", a little light was blinking orange and it refused to start up.

Remedy - undo six fiddly little screws, put the "shoe tray" in the dryer and put the open camera in there for an hour. That seems to have done the trick - for now. We'll see if it's still working in the morning.

Good thing I have two more of them if it isn't.

3 comments:

Pedro the Ignorant said...

I have an old Nikon digital that I dropped into a swimming pool. After I rescued it, I stripped the back cover, emptied out the worst of the water and blew it dry with a hair dryer.

Left it open for about 48 hours then reassembled it. Now works as well as ever. These digitals are tougher than they look.

Brian said...

4 Inches eh?

Minicapt said...

Or bury it in a container of fresh rice, and place in a warm spot, c.10-20C above ambient.

Cheers