WP-DC300 housing leak

After hundreds of dives and thousands of photos, I got a leak in my WP-DC300 housing -- a tiny leak. After a 37 minute dive, there was maybe a thimbleful of water inside the housing. Now my Canon s50 will not function properly:

menus cannot be accessed

zoom doesn't work

use of zoom creates 2 photos taken

camera will not move off AUTO

and many etc.s

If I work with it and allow the camera to take many useless shots, I can eventually get it to take the picture I want and the camera will save it to my memery chip and I can still process the photo on my computer. But this is a nearly useless endeavor.

Any experience out there with this? Is my camera dead? No warentee exists.

Thanks for any attention.

Bruce

Yes Bruce, your camera is probably dead. Once saltwater gets into sensitive electronics, it will never be the same again. Even if the camera dries out, the salt crystals will still remain inside - and they will re-hydrate every time the camera goes into a humid environment.

If you got hundreds of dives out of your system, you did pretty well.

Sincerely,

James Wiseman

I flooded my S40 also with only a very litte bit of water. This is the problem with the small housing. even if you have a small leak the water will propably effect the camera.

I had a much stronger leak with my S&S Housing for my D60 (my fault) but due the big housing only some drops ever contacted the camera -> so no problem!

If your camera is out of warranty (probably is, with hundreds of dives), I would remove the battery, take apart the camera body and see if you can see any salt crystallization on the electronics. If you can, rinse it off with warm (preferably distilled) water, then let it dry before reassembling the camera.

But then, I'm a DIY kinda guy - your mileage may vary.

For the $400 a new camera would cost you, I personally would go down that route.

I flooded my A40 with only a drop of salt water last year. She's dead, Bruce - get a new camera and sell the dead one on EBay for parts - I managed to get $75US from mine!!

Kim