Camera flooding anonymous

There is an old adage in oceanography about scientific instruments that goes don't put it into the ocean unless you are prepared to loose it. And I think a similar mentality exists amongst underwater photographers. Don't take a camera below the waves unless you can afford to flood it.

So it seemed a good oppurtunity to start a general discussion where people can post there experiences of floods. From my own observations and experience on dive boats nearly all the floods I see are user error. And I hope that this discussion will not only provided some amusing stories, but also hopefully allow others to benefit from our mistakes.

Fortunately (well unfortunately for the benefit of this thread) I have never flooded a SLR (digital or film), but I have flooded a Nikonos. I nearly flooded my D2X in the pool earlier this year. My Hasselblad was the main camera for the shoot, but I had taken the D2X along to use to check the lighting and to take a few general shots of the model setup. Anyway in my haste to prepare two housings I did not pay enough attention to closing the D2X housing and as soon as I took it in the water a few drops started to run into the housing. Thankfully I was checking the housing as I decended, saw the problem and leap from the water (in full dive kit), straight out and over the side of the pool with the athletic agility of dolphin! Thankfully the camera is weather sealed and it has completed many dives in the Red Sea, Bali and Cayman since then!

Anyway I am sure there are some much better stories out there. So lets hear them!

Alex

I had two incidents, both a few years ago when I lived in Brazil.

First I flooded a Nikonos SB-103. Guess what, it was my first time using the (borrowed) strobe and I forgot to check if the o-ring of the battery compartment was in place. Luckly, a good freshwater rinse solved the problem.

The second was my Ikelite housing for the N90s. I was doing a relatively deep dive (150ft) and when I got to the bottom I noticed water slowly entering the housing. I couldn't just go up like a dolphin because I was too deep, so since the water was entering slowly, I decided to continue the dive and carried the housing with the dome facing down. There was a few ounces of water in the end of the dive but camera and lens were fine. After many dives testing the empty housing I found out that the water was coming in through a micro crack around the o-ring of one of the buttons.

Luiz

I have had more than my fare share of floods in the 18 months with my Ikelite/300D kit.

Floods 1, 2, and 3 August 2004 The C-clips that hold the buttons in place started failing. Lost 3 clips in one week of diving. The first time it happened it was a near loss ~1" of water in the housing. Fortunately the camera was still functional after it dried over night. The other two times only a few drops of water got in because I was watching it very closely and held the button in place until I got out of the water.

Flood 4 February 2005 Left the port o-ring on the boat. Total loss: camera, lens, CF card, and eTTL circuitry.

Flood 5 August 2005 DS-125 battery filled up with water. Was the second dive of the day and I did not touch the strobe between dives. Have no clue what happened. Strobe was fine only battery was toast.

I can remember 3 other times where I got the the back of the boat just before I jump in and I noticed that the port was not locked in place - just setting on the end of the housing. Fortunately I have never gotten in the water like this.

I flooded my camera two months ago.

I inserted the silka gel pack in the wrong place and it went between the case and the main o-ring.

The camera worked for the first half of the dive, then it gave me " memory card error" only at that time I realized that it was condensation inside and a low level of water inside the housing.

I was with a guide and a group so I couldn't reemerge.

I stayed for the rest of the dive with the camera upside down letting all the water went in the space between the lens and the case.

The camera seemed dead when I took it out It squeezed some droop of water from the battery - card compartment when I pushed it in to a towel.

I waited and in the hotel I used the hairdresser gently in the battery room.

After a while the camera started to live again first with some buttons problem (stayed always pushed) but after a little more hairdresser and went ok.

Maybe a very lucky day ...very lucky.

One day someone told me there is two type of scuba photographer the first type flodded his camera and the second type will do it ;-)

Andrea

Yes and I don't want to talk about it!

I've had some minor floods with my Nikonos's in the past, but everything lived then.

I was doing one dive off of San Clamente with an Ikelite house Nikon N70 with an Ike 150 strobe. The strobe flooed at about 70', shorting out, blowing up the flash tube, put an electronic pulse down the sinc cord, blowing out the mother board in the camera. It also put enough of a pluse thru the water to erase the menory of my citizen dive watch. Not a good day at all.

The most recent flood killed my D70 in an Ike housing. We were doing a shore entry at Rocky Point Mexico at low tide. Well, its called Rocky Point for a good reason. I slipped on some very slippery rocks, landing square on my tail bone. Everyone was worry and checking on me and not the camera now lying in about 3' of water. All I can assume is that when the camera hit the water the port was moved and when someone thought about recovering it, it was half full of water. Latter dives with just the housing showed no damage to it.

New D70 in the housing and life is good. Who knows, someday I'll get up the nerve and post some of my shots with it

DSDO

Stephen

Idon't want to talk about it either. Two weeks ago, with the FS2, just days before I was headed to Hong Kong to pick up my new ND2 housing. One S2 Pro body and an 11-24 lens both fried. And a 2 GB card. The FS2 housing had been essentially sold to a friend, but no money had changed hands. Now it's on its way back to Austria for thorough servicing.

It was completely my fault, stupid, but it could have been worse - I could have done the same thing next week on my first dives with the D2x and ND2.

My first (and only other) flood was with on the last day of a liveaboard trip, my first to Komodo, about five or six years ago, with the Miniplex housing for the F-801S. I never figured out what caused that. (Now that I think about it, John Bantin was on that trip. Maybe it was his fault!)

Frogfish

My first significant flood happened on the dive 1 of a 3 week expedition to the Eastern Fields - PNG.

A misaligned viewfinder oring developed a leak about 20 minutes into the dive at about 40 meters - there was nothing to do except look at the drip as it developed into a trickle and so on....... the result was one completely dead unsalvageable VX1000 and one dead able to be rebuilt housing.

The captain of the boat still talks about how calm I was...... if he only knew what was going on inside - still the forced slow ascent did give me plenty of time to digest what was going on.

A few years later a had an issue with one of the battery pods on my HID video lights - total loss

Then all remained good for quite a few years.

Then 2 months ago in Alor it all caught up

2 weeks into 3 week expedition in Alor

2 Partial / 1 total floods on D2X's .

1st flood cause unknown although I suspect a a hair - lost the dive saved tha camera.

2nd Flood flooded through port. apparent handling error - Port rotated and resulted in significant flood - Total loss 1 x D2X , 1 8 gig card & 1x 12-24 lens.

3rd flood minor flood due to misaligned port ( operator error - familiarity will get you in the end ) - lost dive , field repair saved camera except for autofocus function.

Dived on incident free for the rest of the trip shooting manual focus 16mm & 105.

Gee - I feel better now that I have shared this ................

I have also had a D2x flood through the ports (Nexus). I port mount my strobes and got a bit rough with the rig, putting 1.5 inches of water in the housing. Luckily the housing misted up immediately so it was all out of the water with 4 minutes. I thought it was all finished but the camera was still operational! The housing took a wash and about 2 days of deep drying (esp for finder) to be OK.

Have not flooded my camera yet in 3 years and a tad under 350 dives (knock on wood) but I flooded my Ikelite DS-125 once on the first day of my Komodo trip a couple of years ago.

I think what happened was I dropped the battery pack on the boat and cracked the casing without noticing it. Needless to say the strobe was toasted!

Thanks to Ikelite who fixed the strobe and I only had to pay for shipping one way!

I flooded my Fisheye light and Epoque Halogen focus light in Lembeh a couple of months ago. The first one I had no idea how it happened, the Epoque, after recharging the nonremovable battery, I forgot to recap the socket, duh!

One day someone told me there is two type of scuba photographer the first type flodded his camera and the second type will do it ;-)

Andrea

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This may be slightly off topic. The above quote made me chuckle as we had a similar saying around a flying club I used to belong to. It went something like this "There are only two types of retractable gear aircraft, those that have belly landed and those that will". I guess there are parallels to be made between different pursuits. Sort of makes a flooded camera housing seem down right enjoyable given the costs involved in each.

Save a penny and lose $1000...

When I was first getting into underwater photography, and decided to upgrade from an Ikelite Auto35 to a housed SLR, I bought a used housing off eBay. The housing itself was really really old, and did not fit the SLR (an F601) I planned to house. But the ports were OK...

Ikelite used to use a glue that would go opaque when it got really old, and became very brittle. The dome port I got with the housing I got from eBay fitted the f601 housing I bought, so I used it. It was completely opaque all the way around the connection between the two parts of the dome. First dive with this system at any real depth (95 feet) the glue failed, irrigating the camera and 24mm lens. The housing actually shuddered as the battery shortcircuited and a large puff of smoke floated up into the rapidly disappearing air pocket.

This was the first dive of a two week trip to Australia, so I ended up shooting a rented MX-10 on the GBR. And the rental camera failed to load 5 of 11 rolls of film correctly.

I bought a new port.

irrigating the camera and 24mm lens

What a great desciption.............

I recall having lot's of issue's with MX10's in rental - digital certainly has changed that for the better

My first (and only other) flood was with on the last day of a liveaboard trip, my first to Komodo, about five or six years ago, with the Miniplex housing for the F-801S.  I never figured out what caused that.  (Now that I think about it, John Bantin was on that trip.  Maybe it was his fault!)

 

Frogfish

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I think it is too easy to rotate the large dome port on a Subal housing especially if you use a spacer. I lost an S2 Pro and 12-24mm lens too. Do not let any other person remove the dome cover when it is out of the water before diving. Take it off yourself only when it is under pressure.

By the way Robert, I was really offended you never mentioned you knew me on the Wet-pixel Members You've Met thread. (Only joking!!!) My brain is so fried I can't remember who I met last week.

Knock on wood, only an ancient Ikelite Substrobe 150 which was well into 600+ dives maybe early 1990s.

I reached up to change the switch from TTL to manual on a wall in Grand Cayman many moons ago. I thought, "Hmmmmm, that's strange the ready light is blinking on and off?" This of course was water dribbling in the old rubber switch boot. Then like an idiot on Nitrogen Narcosis I fired my Nik V with 15mm lens at my subject. The strobe goes "KAPOW!" and I look in the front seeing a blackened reflector area

I sent it in after returning and tehy made it like new for a very low price including replacing electronics back then (I recall something like $150.00 USD.)

A comment, on port systems that bayonet on since many have reported their floods came from this connection. I have used small pieces of duct tape at 3 and 6 o'clock to prevent the port from turning at all. Not pretty , but it works

dhaas

I think it is too easy to rotate the large dome port on a Subal housing especially if you use a spacer. I lost an S2 Pro and 12-24mm lens too. Do not let any other person remove the dome cover when it is out of the water before diving. Take it off yourself only when it is under pressure.

 

By the way Robert, I was really offended you never mentioned you knew me on the Wet-pixel Members You've Met thread. (Only joking!!!) My brain is so fried I can't remember who I met last week.

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Unless I'm mistaken, John, my only contribution to that thread (in which I mainly complained about Dr. Alex Mustard forgetting to mention in his post that he'd met and dived with me ) was actually made before you jointed wetpixel. There really wouldn't have been much point in bragging I know you to people who hadn't heard of you yet, would there? But if you like, I'm happy to go back and remedy the situation with some scurrilous gossip from the days of that great soap opera, "As Pelagian Turns."

I agree about the problem with the Surbal dome port with extension ring, though it's had only been a problem for me very recently, and I've been shooting with the same extension ring + dome configuration on 70% of my dives for almost three years. I rememered your recent post about your flood, and suspected that I must have mistakenly switched in an old-style thin o-rings. Or that I had ended up using a different extension ring than I usually do. (For some reason, I have two 50 mm rings.) My mistake was to worry about this enough to try to change the o-ring early one morning, staying in a room without very good light. I thought I was being careful, but somehow I misaligned the port when I put it back on, and that was that. If I'd left the port and o-ring as it was - I'd already used the way it was for several dives - and stuck a few strips of duct tape on as dhaas suggests, all would have been well.

R.

There you are - It WAS my fault. I will stick a bundle of used notes in the post immediately. (Alas, they may be used notes I left our for our milk-delivery man.)

If. What a wonderful word that is! By the way, did I tell you I hate underwater photography?

Best Regards

JB

I don't quite understand exactly where you put the duct tape?

Also.... on my first dive with my Aquatica D100 I decided to just take it down without a camera to be safe. Anyway, I was getting ready to hop in (this was on a liveaboard) and there were no crew members around to ask to hand me my camera once I was in, so I just handed it down to Howard Hall, who was waiting for his massive HD rig (which took up about half of the camera table) He proceeded to laugh at me and announce that I had forgotten to put the camera in the housing... I thought he would have been impressed that I was being so careful and patient!! Then on that very dive another diver's Subal housing for a Cannon ?? flooded. Im just waiting for my turn... knock on wood.

We had a few occurrences of floods.

First… A Nikonos II that went for service at Nikon Canada and proceeded to leak upon returning from the "factory repair facility"… Never trusted them again afterward for Nikonos work… went to the real Nikonos repair experts, i.e. the likes of U/W camera tech, etc…

Second, an Ike SS-30 battery compartment… not properly screwed down the compartment cap… $30 repair bill and 7 day turnover…. Not bad.

Third, on our very first all digital trip… both our brand new housings sprung leaks… after 9 and 12 dives respectively!!!!! Housings were replaced and everything went fine after that.

Besides that… we were pretty lucky. I must confess that we are absolute maintenance freaks, i.e. we keep everything in pristine condition. We have material periodically sent in for full maintenance but this is done on a 3 – 4 year cycle.

Having said that, I think, along Alex's law and I would add that cameras, lenses and strobes are the ultimate sacrificial anodes !

Michel

Oh,

I forgot to mention this scuba club who asked us to lecture on maintenance... after they flooded the club's brand new Nik V/SB-105/20mm setup ;-)

Michel