My 11 Sealife dives in Kona: the good, the bad, the ugly

[sabbath999]

I just got back from a trip to our other home, Kona, Hawai'i.

It was my first chance to try out the DC1000 Maxx in salt water.

The Good: I had a strobe die a week before I left, and the good folks at Sealife got a replacement to me in time for me to take it on my trip.

The Bad: The replacement strobe flooded on my very first dive, the first time it got in water... I noticed the strobe stopped working at 82 feet, so I just switched over to the one strobe and continued the dive. I didn't want to disassemble stuff on the boat so I waited until I got back to the room and let it dry off good, then opened it up to see what was amis... and water came out. It wasn't completely flooded, but there were about 30 drops of water that came out of the inside and the strobe didn't work any more for the trip. I took exactly one picture with it.

The Ugly: On dive four, my shutter started sticking any time the camera was below 50 feet. Once it stuck, it was over for the dive. I took it to the room, streamed water through it, tried to clean out any sand or salt or whatever, and it worked fine as long as I didn't press the button below 50 feet.

The Also Ugly. My wife broke one of the bottom plastic plates when packing the camera... she just bent the plate until it snapped. I have no idea why.

Back to the good. I got some REALLY nice pictures.

Here's the first one I played with (I did some color work in post procsessing in Capture NX), my first dive at Golden Arches.

EXIF: Sealife DC1000, 1/102, f3.5, no flash, edited in CaptureNX.

 

[sladerer]

Nice shot. I can't believe your luck with strobes - it must be some kind of curse. I seem to have
one of my own relating to dive lights now. On my last two trips I've had a C8 and a C4 flood, respectively.

What do you mean by the shutter was sticking - the button or the actual shutter - hoping you're
not streaming water over actual shutter ;-)

Have you tried putting a little silicon lubricant on the button shaft?

 

[CheddarChick]

Nice shot!!!!
And man you do have issues......with underwater cameras anyway!!! LOL

 

[deeper thoughts]

Sorry about the bad luck

 

[sabbath999]

What do you mean by the shutter was sticking - the button or the actual shutter - hoping you're not streaming water over actual shutter ;-)

Have you tried putting a little silicon lubricant on the button shaft?

OK, you got me... it was the case button not the camera's shutter

I haven't tried putting silicon on the shaft because I don't know how to reach it (it is hidden under the big button).

I put the camera case with my shipment to Sealife for repairs and am going to have them look at it, along with both of my strobes (the one that was working has a bad switch that only works part of the time... fiddle with it enough and you can get it to turn on and you just leave it on throughout the day), plus the one that flooded plus the previous one that had the defective brightness knob on it... they are getting three strobes and a camera case in the mail from me.

I have now spent more than $100 just returning defective parts to Sealife over the last 7 months.

 

[Misa]

I`ve heard the button remains stuck sometimes due to pressure. My camera had this problem once around 50feet. Wierd

 

[sladerer]

I have the 600, so don't know exactly what the internals on the enclosure look like for th3 1000 -

With the case open, when you depress a button on the camera you'll see the shaft extend and a
small horseshoe shaped clip will be accessible. Use a pair of needle nose pliers to remove this clip
and the button/shaft can be pulled out of the camera housing (along with the gaskets/spacer).
Remove the gaskets/spacer and apply just a touch of silicon lubricant, then replace everything
just like it was. I used the auto spray type - just sprayed it on a spare piece of wood and then
used a q-tip to dab.

After a couple years several buttons on my camera, including the flash selection, had developed
very slow response. This fix worked like a champ.