does my housing need service?

I had a mild panic on the weekend, after two full days of diving. I'm using a Nauticam EM-5 housing and flat port. I always rinse the housing after every dive. I opened the housing to change batteries and download images twice, and each time inspected, lubed, and refitted the port and body o-rings. After the final dive I put the camera in a cooler full of fresh water for a long soak. Only my camera and strobes were in there, nothing else, and they were not dropped abruptly. I'm the only one who uses the cooler so I know it was not disturbed.

When I returned after 30 minutes, the leak alarm was beeping! I quickly dried the exterior and extracted the camera. There were only a few drops of water inside the housing thankfully, and in fact I could not quite see how there was enough to even trigger the alarm. Nonetheless, there was water inside which cannot be a good thing. I inspected the o-rings again very carefully and could find no evidence of anything that would have caused a leak. The o-rings are about a year old and have done maybe 100 dives. What I cannot quite understand is how the housing did not develop a problem during 5 dives at depth, but then leaked a little during a gentle soak.

Any advice? I would like to know if there is any way to determine the problem myself through inspection or in a pool first. Sending the housing for service will be a major pain as it would have to go to Singapore, so I would miss out on probably a couple of months of use at the best time of the year here in the Philippines, but if that is what I have to do then I will.

I would suggest service as it can never hurt or get a vacuum pump system to properly test (or both).

I know what you mean, but I would classify taking my camera out of service for a couple of months in the best season as "hurt"! In fact I would like to do both of those things ASAP, but neither is possible where I live.

I have experienced very small amounts of water in a housing due to condensation from very humid air being closed up then cooled off in the ocean. My Nauticam 7D housing moisture alarm went off on me at depth and I still had a vacuum in place. Turns out it was due an extremely humid hot day in Mexico and no air conditioning to setup in. It was just enough moisture to light off the alarm. The other option I'd look at is the shutter seal. The shutter o-rings gets the most wear and can be the first area to leak. They might look fine and could only have an issue when you move the shutter lever.

Try taking the housing down without the camera (grab some extra weight) and move the shutter a bunch (and all the buttons for that matter) and see if it repeats. If you have a dry box after testing it could have been a humidity problem.

Good luck!

Steve

Some times when you install the main body 'O' ring it may get twisted. When this happens, the fine circumfrential mold parting line of the ring may allow a few drops in.

Previous poster suggested a vacuum unit. I have one on each of our housings and it relieves a lot of worry.

Crazy timing on your post troporobo.

Last week I had my Canon 5DII in Sealux housing underwater for 4.5 hours straight, during which the camera was only in use for the first 90 minutes. About 45 minutes after the dive, when the camera+housing was just sitting on the ground, the leak detector started squealing. Opening up the housing I discovered that there was indeed water inside, about half a teaspoon... certainly too much to be a humidity issue but most definitely an incredibly slow leak!

Does anyone have experience with very small or slow leaks?

The theory that came to mind is that it was a button leak that only occurred when the button was in use. I removed the viewfinder (two orings) and big rear oring - they looked fine but I cleaned them, relubricated and replaced. I didn't touch the dome orings as I couldn't see any sign that the water came from the front of the housing. Today I took the empty housing for a half hour dive and depressed all the buttons/levers etc. Not a sniff of moisture inside.

So what now? Do I assume I fixed the problem by cleaning those 3 orings, put the camera back in and away I go? It seems improbable that it was the rear oring that was the problem, because it seems unlikely to me that the water ingress could be so small after 4.5 hours of exposure. My other thought is that it was the viewfinder. Maybe some water got in through both orings when it was swivelled (twisting/failure of two orings?). I don't believe the viewfinder was bumped at any point.

Not sure if I still have a looming problem or not. I am very keen to get the camera back in the housing. A vacuum check system is not possible in the short term where I'm currently based and I have a serious of dive trips back to back from now for the next 6 weeks. Yikes!

I feel your pain for sure. I wish that I had a service center nearby, or within overnight courier distance, but no. So my choice (sounds like your choice too) is to troubleshoot and pray, or accept not having the camera for most of the season. Neither is attractive right now.

My guess is that the main O-ring is losing its flexibility and does not seal just quite enough. When you go deeper, the water pressure pushes the housing halves firmly together which helps the main O-ring to seal. But when closer to the surface and especially in a rinse tub, there is hardly any water pressure helping. Then it is just the latches pressing the housing halves against the gradually oldening main O-ring.

As a first aid, you might consider lubing the main O-ring and trying to place it in its groove slightly twisted inside out 90 degrees to a position it has not yet set into. I.e. just lay the O-ring on top of the O-ring groove and notice how the O-ring settles. Then turn the inside of the O-ring out 90 degrees. This might bring the less-flattened surfaces of the O-ring against the opposing housing surfaces. You might also want to check if the latches have moved, even a bit. Try removing the latches and re-tightening them further away from the seam thus creating a stronger force on the deteriorating O-ring.

Thanks for those thoughts, you may be right about the ageing o-rings. I'm going to replace them and test in the pool this weekend, along with the button test.

I replace o-rings every dive season (dirt cheap). I literally throw the old ones away, as I can't visually tell they're old.

Also, I never store the body with the o-rings in it.

When I assemble my rig, I remove all o-rings, clean out the seats with a Q-tip, wipe off the o-rings, inspect the o-rings and seats with a magnifier, then reseal everything (learned this the hard way after getting a hair in the gasket, which gave me a leak).

Happy shooting.

I thought to update this thread now that my problem seems to be resolved.

I replaced the body and port o-rings then tried it in the pool. It seemed OK but I wanted to be extra sure so had the housing tested at the equivalent of 0m, 10m, and 30m, and everything checked out fine.

To give myself extra peace of mind, I installed a Leak Sentinel vacuum system this weekend and it shows the housing holding a vacuum. So I think its all good. When the season tapers off in a few months, I will send it for full service.