Canon Housing Leaks - Easy DIY Fix

[blibecap]

Great article and great link.

From my experience of repairing & servicing housings. I've seen leaks on every brand available. But most of them are user error! I've seen a brand-new D300 drowned in a Nexus housing (left the port 'O' Ring out!!) and a D90 in a Sea & Sea housing with sea water half way up the dome port (left the main 'O' Ring out!!).
But it is pretty rare to see a housing fail to keep water out if it is maintained correctly.
Of the compact housings:
Olympus lead the way with far sturdier housings, particularly the button mechanism.
Panasonic seem to have had some problems with catostrophic full-floods, their housings are the most 'toy-like' of all.
Canon have a nice housing, but with light duty buttons. Most of the repairs I do for these are sticky shutter buttons and sanding mould release lines.
Don't ask me why someone at Canon hasn't spotted this problem, Every single Canon G9 thru G12 housing I have opened has the lines, some are a little worse than others, but ALL have it. I figure the guy who works in Quality Control is probably off on 'stress leave' and no-one else cares?
If you'd like to read-up on how to maintain your own housing, then please read my Housing Maintenance article at DivePhotoGuide.com, regular use of the button lubrication method I describe will certainly help stop sticky buttons on Canon housings. However it won't fix an already sticky button.

 

[sbfish]

Likely you have salt deposits or grit that are preventing you from making intimate seal. Once everything is clean, you have to tighten it very well to avoid seepage.

I had the 1st o-ring upside down and as a result wasn't fitting in the little slots of the housing correctly. Went out on a dive boat over the weekend, lowered the housing over board before putting the camera in, came up perfectly dry. Had a great dive and good pics

 

[UnderwaterCameraHouse]

Are you sure the canon housing is leaking?

 

[sbfish]

The first signs of a problems was water droplets, not flooding per se, forming on the top of the rubber inside the port, enough condensation formed before I could get to the surface and it killed the camera. Since removing, cleaning, and screwing the port back on it resolved the problem.

 

[Lyndon]

Wish Id seen this before completely ruining 2 canons. :blinking:

 

[dfx]

i have a G9 with canon housing. I have found that if you are taking lots of video at 70feet plus and then get into warmner water the heat generated by the battery may cause a slight fog.

Heat doesn't cause condensation, heat causes evaporation!

 

[ScubaMarc]

Heat doesn't cause condensation, heat causes evaporation!

what happens when the evaporation water from the hot camera hits the the colder case lens?

 

[dfx]

what happens when the evaporation water from the hot camera hits the the colder case lens?

Unless you have a source of liquid water somewhere inside the case, heat in the case doesn't produce additional evaporated moisture.

 

[Hawkwood]

It is a result of humidity inside the housing and temperature difference between the housing and the surrounding water temperature.

There is a snippet from an article from: Underwater Photography Guide

[h=2]Camera Fogging Prevention[/h]Has your underwater camera fogged up underwater? Is your waterproof housing fogging? Many people have had this problem. Here's some tips to avoid having a a fogged up lens. I have not had fogging problems in a long time, even with my compact cameras.

• Always keep one or two fresh, newly "charged" dessicants in your housing
  
• Try to setup your housing and close it in a cool, dry area to minimize the moisture inside the housing. Inside your cool, air-con room is a good choice. Outside on the boat on a hot, humid day can be a poor choice and can lead to fogging.
  
• Don't let your camera & housing get hot - keep it cool, out of the sun. Having a wet towel over it at all times is a good idea.
  
• Be very careful when you close the housing, that the dessicant doesn't get caught on the o-ring, and can't fall onto the lens port
  
• Compact cameras are more susceptible to fogging
  
• Fogging is more likely to happen when it's hot on the surface, and cold underwater

 

[dfx]

It is a result of humidity inside the housing and temperature difference between the housing and the surrounding water temperature.

That's not entirely accurate. The significant temperature difference is the difference between the water temperature and the temperature of the air where you closed the housing. Once the housing is closed, the amount of moisture inside it is a fixed absolute value (assuming no leaks of course). What's changing is the relative humidity: raising the temperature lowers the relative humidity, lowering the temperature raises it. If relative humidity becomes high enough because the temperature is low enough, the water vapour condensates (very simplified).

That's why you want to close the housing in a cold environment. Cold air means low absolute amounts of humidity in the air, because excess humidity has already condensated out of the air elsewhere. Once the housing is closed, it's no problem to let it heat up, because no additional moisture can enter the housing. Heating it up will actually reduce fogging, because it lowers the relative humidity. When it cools back down to the temperature it had before, relative humidity goes back to the same level it was before. If it didn't fog up before, it also won't fog up now, because there's no more humidity inside the housing than before. Close the housing in a fridge or freezer and you'll be golden. It will fog up on the outside when you take it out, but not on the inside. Of course, both housing and camera would have to be left in the fridge as well to get them down to the same temperature and remove any excess moisture they might have in or on them before closing it up, which is a bit of a problem especially inside the camera where you can get condensation from that, so don't try this at home.

• Try to setup your housing and close it in a cool, dry area to minimize the moisture inside the housing. Inside your cool, air-con room is a good choice. Outside on the boat on a hot, humid day can be a poor choice and can lead to fogging.
• Don't let your camera & housing get hot - keep it cool, out of the sun. Having a wet towel over it at all times is a good idea.

These two points actually contradict each other. I'm calling BS on the second one. It's only an issue if you let it heat up with the housing open and/or the camera outside, but then you wouldn't have a wet towel over them. People usually associate higher temperature with higher humidity. But in a closed system like inside a sealed housing, this isn't true. There's no liquid water that the heat can evaporate, so when it cools back down, there's no additional humidity in the air inside that could condensate. If you turn on your oven and let it heat up and then cool back down again (with nothing inside!), there won't be any condensation anywhere.

Of course you may still want to protect your housing from excess heat, even when it's closed, just in case the heat messes with the seals and causes them to leak. But that's an entirely different issue than having a hot battery inside the housing, which raises the air temperature slightly.