GoPro Hero 3 Flooded

[flareside]

I love how some people rationalize and defend poor engineering by counting the number of successes.

Actually, counting the number of successes is how you defend good engineering. And based on the vast number of successes and the extremely limited number of failures of the millions of GoPro cameras housings in use there is no doubt that the housing is properly engineered and tested.

You probably ought to stay away from underwater cameras. When you refuse to accept responsibility for your own mistakes, you don't learn from them and any future camera is likely to wind up like your GoPro.

 

[TheTrickster]

The GoPro housings are indeed rated to 200ft (60m) - and I can confirm they work deeper (240ft) and they survive much deeper depths too (360ft)...I know of one being found on the Maiden in Egypt (110m) and apart from the dead battery, once charged the camera and housing were fine...

Do you have any replacement doors on yours? I find with mine, with the LCD Bac, its tight!

Also grease, due to the shape of the GoPro O-Ring, it has been advised to use as little as possible, almost wipe on - wipe off.

If you still have it, take it under without the camera and pack with some blue tissue - maybe its a crack in the housing, more than a gasket issue. With some blue tissue once you surface, you will be able to see where its leaked from.

 

[toddthecat]

Am I immediately jumping to conclusion that all GoPro housings are bad? Well... yes. With the assumption that manufacturing tolerances are so well respected these days, I am reverting my suspicions to design.

So if the majority of us are wrong in defending the camera housing because the number of successes it has had, how does that justify you "immediately jumping to conclusion that all GoPro housings are bad"? Pot, meet tea kettle.

I'd say your jumping to conclusions based on a circumstance that happens to a small minority of people is far more outlandish than people claiming the housing works fine, especially when you consider the good vs. bad reviews. If ALL, or MOST of the housings have a design flaw, then why aren't ALL or MOST of the GoPro users talking about flooded housings and complaining about it?

Now having said all of that.......why do you want GoPro to replace what you call a defective product? If it is defective then you will just end up with another flooded camera. Why do that to yourself? No rational person would replace defective with defective...

 

[ajduplessis]

Nothing wrong with the design or housing. Have dived them 300ft without issues. Others in our group to 450ft!!!!!!!

 

[WaterSnorklerDiver]

On many housings, there seem to be a single point of failure. O-rings cost pennies, why not put two. A plastic bag with a glass window (for the lense) could serve as a backup device. Whatever. I still thing that the engineering is a little lazy and that we could do better... One lesson learned in engineering in the last 30 years is: test, test, test, test, test. When users are using "rubber bands" to fix engineering issues, it's a failure of adequate testing.

thefeve - I'm glad that things worked out for you. I got a similar "deal" so things worked out ok for me too.

Thank you everybody for responding.

 

[yarik83]

Let's start from the back and work our way forward. WaterSnorklerDiver creates his account in September of 2013 and has 4 posts in this very thread. What that means is that he/you are a new person to the forum so while you may have been lurking around forums (for your sake I hope you did), you can not reasonably call yourself a seasoned videographer who knows a thing or two about gopros, considering that you are new to diving with a gopro.

One topic I did not cover in my "did you" test was use of back door. Ohhhh.... I know what you are going to say... I used a back door... was not that enough?! Did you... yep... we are returning to this again... did you use RIGID door or did you use LCD touch door or did you use standard door or did you use vented door? That is important because if you have accidentally used the flexible door on your deep dive then no wonder if failed.

But that aside let's get back to your issues. If your housing failed, you would see a giant crack somewhere. Very simple. There would be a crack. A crack in the clear acrylic would be hard to miss. A crack where glass meets the black square would be harder to spot but your glass would likely break or shatter. So to get to the basics... where did your housing fail? Grab the housing as it is without the camera... jump in the pool and get to the bottom. You can do same exact thing in a bath tub, bucket of water, sink etc etc. If there was a failure of housing then water would immediately get into the "broken" housing.

After you determine that your housing has picked up water you will know that it was the housing. If your housing will be nice and dry then it was the o-ring.

You can not reasonably blame gopro for manufacturer defect. Gopro was never meant to be used under water. It was designed to be waterproof for surfing or kayaking but not diving. It was not until divers started taking it down and then commented to gopro about blur issue on hero cameras and then gopro came out with a flatport housing and then they released hero 3 with a flat port housing. Gopro was never designed to be a scuba camera. Scuba divers made it a scuba camera and sheer fact that it is capable of taking the plunge millions of times every single month is a testament to great engineering. There are 140,000+ divers on these forums. I can guarantee that probably 1/3 people here has a gopro that they use for diving. Millions of other divers who do not visit these forums use gopros for diving.. just look on youtube. Fail rate on these things is astronomically low. Do they fail? Sure! But 99% of time they do not fail because there is a flaw in the housing... they fail because users compromise the housing by installing aftermarket glass windows or breaking windows and ordering new ones but not properly sealing the glass or forgetting to check o-rings or dropping camera one too many times.

If you were a member here with hundreds of posts to your name... heck even 50... and registered several months ago... I would totally have asked you all the same questions.. and I know... you have a bit of pride in you so you do not want to consider a possibility that accidents just happen or it even might have been your own fault.

I have lost my $400 gopro hero3 black + battery backpack + wasabi battery + floaty back door + bike seat post mount + my kayak gopro mounting pole + 32gb micro sd card class 10 in aligator infested river. That was back in June. If camera is still there I can bet you a silver dollar that when I go to retrieve it in november... I will plug it into the outlet, charge it up and it will still work like a dream having survived 5 river floods, gators, being banged up on my mountain bike and dropped a number of times. Assuming camera was not swept out to sea... it would be very tough for it to fail.

You want to know how tough gopro housings are? Have a look at this video...

[video=youtube;wFjBKeNSF_s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFjBKeNSF_s[/video]
[video=youtube;wloAxOR9Fa4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wloAxOR9Fa4[/video]

And talk about engineering NSFW language at the end:
[video=youtube;ZsSavfNfWRg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsSavfNfWRg[/video]


if it takes a 3000 ft free fall to put a slight crack into housing and camera still works then I think it can pretty much survive anything.

Video production companies use it, television studios use it, millions upon millions of people use it and millions upon millions of divers use it upon millions of dives every year. That is what I call a success.

 

[Randy g]

120-150' here on 30 dives this season and no problems............Just sayin!

Sounds like user error.

 

[Stoo]

I love how some people rationalize and defend poor engineering by counting the number of successes.

I love how some people rationalize and defend poor camera prep procedures by counting the number of failures... ;-)

WSD, I'm sorry for your luck and it might very well be that there is a problem with the housing. However, as you pointed out yourself, you had done several dives, and numerous snorkel dives without incident. That being the case, the housing either isn't flawed, or something happened to it prior to the last, flooding, dive. It's unlikely that the housing suddenly developed a "flaw", so the logical conclusion is that something (and by that I mean an o-ring) either was pinched, or had something on it... a hair, fleck of sand, even a grain of dried salt.

I've been taking cameras into the water pretty much weekly for, I think, 36 years, starting with a Nikonos III and most recently a DSLR in an Aquatica housing. I have never flooded one (I'm knocking on my wooden head currently) and I credit that to a bit of luck and a lot of meticulous care in the preparation of my cameras.

It sucks to flood a camera, but with the gazillion or so GoPros in the water on a daily basis, to make a blanket statement like you have is a bit much. Send the stuff into GoPro and plead stupid and maybe they'll fix you up. If not, chalk it up to experience, buy a new one, and be more careful in the future. And be glad you didn't flood a $5000 Nikon.

 

[sphyrnidus]

I owned several ow camera's and have quite a lot of experience in filming. While I never flooded a cam, my SO did. I took it to the shop and we tested it: nothing wrong. These guys are specialized in uw cams. They also sell GoPro. They told me it is quite seldom that a housing fails due to construction error. Almost always it is user error. As is probably with TS GopPro


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[flareside]

Actually, there have been several reports of a manufacturing problem with the GoPro Hero3 housings. The reports indicate the front glazing screws have been over tightened and have cracked the plastic housing which has led to leakage. It is a good idea to check the inside face of the glazing mount for tiny cracks at the screw tips on the housings prior to any dive trips as the cracks may take time and usage stress to fully develop.