Need Help with PD-170

Hi All:

Well, last weekend was the first dive of the season and I had a chance to try my new PD-170 in my Gates Housing off North Carolina. Unfortunately, on the second dive, I had a problem (besides getting seasick, LOL).

When I got to the bottom and tried to change settings, almost nothing worked. Exposure was locked and manual white balance would not engage. I could clearly see that I was moving the exposure dial, and I know the MWB toggle "felt right." Focus was set on manual and the camera was NOT autolocked. As far as I could tell, the iris control lever was NOT pushing down on the button (I even rotated it 180 out of the way to check). I couldn't tell if the select/push/execute dial was pushed in or not by the rotating control next to the MWB toggle.

Prior to the second dive (and in the pool), everything worked well. I used a VX2000 in the same housing prior to this and never encountered this problem. When I surfaced and tried to reproduce the problem on the boat without changing any settings - yep, you guessed it - everything worked fine.

I'm thinking a control lever was impinging on something causing the problem, but I'm not sure what?

Here's a short clip of what I shot BEFORE the problem:

Any suggestions or help appreciated!

Cheers...

Andy

How deep were you ? Is it possible one of the buttons was being pressed in by the pressure ? I had a problem with my FX7. It took me a while to figure out, but what was happening was UW at depth, one of the buttons was being held in/down by the pressure, making the other controls act funny. Solution was to make sure all controls were disengaged (rotated away) after selecting them. Try looking at the shutter, gain, wht balance toggle buttons.

I was able to duplicate the problem topside, both in the housing and out. If memory serves me correct, the wht balance toggle was being held in after I selected that mode, which made setting MWB with the push dial not work.

How deep were you ? Is it possible one of the buttons was being pressed in by the pressure ? I had a problem with my FX7. It took me a while to figure out, but what was happening was UW at depth, one of the buttons was being held in/down by the pressure, ....

Yes, my first suspicions is pressure forcing in in one of the buttons.

If you can, remove the knob on the button, and install a stronger spring, or shim it using washers so that it takes more pressure to depress it fully. Contact Gates support, perhaps they have a fix.

For me, I just had to rotate the control away from the button after setting it.