Compilation: Ways to Flood a Camera

[truck1]

Me, in a heavy sea: I jumped with housing in hand and fell slightly forward into a wave, smacking one of the video lights hard, glass down. Water must have squirted past the glass seal before the o-ring had a chance to do its thing. Very minor flood but that video light was useless for the rest of that trip. Now I don't do giant-stride entries with housing in hand.

Regards
Peter

I ll have to remeber that.Was in the keys the beginning of March in rough seas and never even thought about the orings not reacting fast enough from a sudden shock.

My own almost flood was from not double checking my locks on the housing.My DC 600 has 2 locks.I got the first one and the second was not competely locked.Just a hair away.Caught it soon enough before I got wet.

 

[mikerault]

I removed my 20D from the Ikelite housing then closed the top latch and put the housing in the rinse tank...oops...need all three latches for the seal to work...luckily clean fresh water in the rinse tank and quickly pulled the housing out and dried it, the properly latched it and put it back in for a good soak...

Mike

 

[skywalk]

Sounds a bit like urban legend. Who would bother to put a camera in a housing if they thought a camera would survive with the housing opened? Why not just take the camera down as is, I mean most are weather proof to some degree!

your guess is as good as mine. Poor fella just didnt know how to work the casing. so he opened it up in frustration to turn it on I guess. the rest is history...

 

[ponypix]

Had a Canon Mark II flood (came back from canon with note "not economically feasible to repair) in an Ewa-marine bag housing. Didn’t blow enough air into bag and took it down to 90 ft. at about 50 ft. back had constricted so much that camera was taking pictures by itself and wouldn’t stop. Thought it would just stop on its own when i ran out of disk space, but I guess it got squeezed so much that water got in. i would not recommend the Ewa-marine.

 

[Taxgeek]

Ponypix, Ouch. That must have hurt.

 

[peterbkk]

Had a Canon Mark II flood (came back from canon with note "not economically feasible to repair) in an Ewa-marine bag housing. Didn’t blow enough air into bag and took it down to 90 ft. at about 50 ft. back had constricted so much that camera was taking pictures by itself and wouldn’t stop. Thought it would just stop on its own when i ran out of disk space, but I guess it got squeezed so much that water got in. i would not recommend the Ewa-marine.

I have played with those EWA-marine bags and owned one for a while many years ago. But the camera controls are hard to operate, the whole sealing system seems a bit suspect and, like your experience, they can actually "squeeze" the camera at depth.

They may have a role to play on the surface, keeping a camera dry on a boat or yacht. But, then again, with new waterproof cameras like the Olympus 725, even this role is redundant.

Regards
Peter

 

[ponypix]

I have played with those EWA-marine bags and owned one for a while many years ago. But the camera controls are hard to operate, the whole sealing system seems a bit suspect and, like your experience, they can actually "squeeze" the camera at depth.

They may have a role to play on the surface, keeping a camera dry on a boat or yacht. But, then again, with new waterproof cameras like the Olympus 725, even this role is redundant.

Regards
Peter

It's actually not a bad contraption in shallow water, you can use your own strobe and all the controls are visible, and much more comfortable than a rigid housing, though if I were smart I would have thought twice about it after a friend had her EOS 1d flood on the Spiegel Grove a few years ago with a similar problem.

 

[Warren_L]

This'll kill you all....had a jap diver buy a kick *** new camera. Top of the line strobe, the works. Then after putting it into his case and descending, he realised he had forgotten to turn on the camera. As he was unfamiliar with the housing, and didn't know how to turn it on, he decided to open his casing underwater to access the camera's power button. People like him should never have children I think

I seeing as there's going to be a pressure differential as soon as he is even only a few feet underwater, I doubt he'd be able to open it underwater even if he tried.

 

[stiebs]

I embarrasingly flooded my Cybershot by being too hasty. Had it all prep'ed, sealed and ready to go, then turned it on for one last check before hitting the water, and noticed memory space was low. It was one of the old 2x256Mb Memory Sticks (Only 128Mb, but flick a switch on the card and it uses another memory chip on the card). I opened the case, flicked the switch and then closed the case. In my hurry, I squeezed the o-ring and didn't check it properly. Only realised at 25m. Oops. Memory card recovered 100%, not so good for the camera.

 

[PapaBob]

I've never had a flood, knock wood.

My one close call was to find right before I jumped in, that the tabs that close over the lens port (Ikelite) had both come undone during a boat ride. I always check the tabs just before getting in the pool now.

A fellow SB member on RMO posted that his Ikelite housing flooded because one of the latches was undone. He swore he had it latched, but they are kinda hard to open accidentally as they lock, so he suspects he may not have latched it properly.

Stephen Frink, famous photodude published an incident where his housing flooded.. the culprit, a DOG HAIR!

Hair seems to be the number one cause of floods posted so far. Maybe it would be interesting to let the thread go for a while, and then do a poll listing potential flood reasons to see some numbers.

Add my vote for dog hair under an o-ring. A hair from my goldie wicked teeny drops into my Nikonos V which somehow found the pc board.

Also, failure to make sure the clips securing a dome port were in position. Fortunately, I was doing a fresh water dunk check and immediately inverted the rig so the water pooled in the bottom of the dome, and my WA lense had a uv filter on it which kept water from entering the lens....whew!

---Bob