flooding!

I have heard some stories about housings flooding, even those made by reputable manufacturers. Does anyone have anything to share? I am thinking of getting a good digital camera with a housing but I am worried...

Hi Lisa - so, first off, I flooded a Nikonos V (and lens) and totally destroyed the entire camera in the process - get this - on my very first dive with it.

$500? Poof! Gone!

It happens, but not often with proper maintenance. However, you may wish to think of this as a time bomb - if you dive enough, odds are that sooner or later you are going to flood a housing (to wit: there are companies that do nothing but repair underwater cameras...)

The best option to ease your mind is just to add a personal effects rider on your homeowner's/renter's insurance policy that covers your loss. As an example, I just did this for my new Tetra still camera housing and my Video housing as well. The equipment is worth somewhere in the range of $7,000... my insurance costs me about $40 a year. Absolutely worth it in my opinion, and it covers loss, flooding, theft, damage in transit, etc.

There are also companies that provide specific insurance for diving equipment, like D.E.P.P and I think even DAN has a new equipment policy (by the way, if you aren't a DAN member, join - NOW!)

Insurance lets you dive and travel worry-free.... and for the cost of four nitrox fills a year, that's pretty cheap.

-David

Unfortunately, nothing is foolproof. However, as long as you take the necessary precautions and do the proper maintenance on your housing, the chances of it flooding are not very great. I've experienced two floods in the last twelve years of occasional diving and underwater photography. One was my fault as I forgot to close a clip that should have been holding the port on my housing. The second was the fault of a dive crew member who handed me a very heavy housing by the port, which wasn't designed to bear much weight. In the first instance, I was helping a friend who was a fairly new diver get into the water and didn't pay enough attention to the housing. In the second case, the dive crew person screwed up and since I was already in the water, there wasn't much I could do about it once he let go. Equipment insurance is a good idea, even if you are very careful . . .

Mike

Flooding is operator error 99% of the time. Take your time when you set up your gear. If you don't have the time to do it slowly, let you photo gear sit that dive out. And you really should get insurance.

Well its 99% operator error assuming you religously have it serviced on an annual basis. You need to remember that the o-rings you service yourself are only a small portion of the rings that are in the housing.

I found out the hard way with an old mmII. I figured since I didnt dive much, I could probably get by with two years or more.

Poof!!!!

Did your orings fail in less than three years? If so I think that is extremely rare. I know a guy with a Nikonos III that hasn't had it's internal orings serviced since he bought it (9+years) and it's still going strong. I'm not suggesting that anyone skip their service but am implying that the majority of the time the flood happens because people forget an oring, pinch it when putting it together in a hurry, etc. It is very rare for an oring to fail.

OK, I hope the manufacturer forgives me, but I think I can really post this here. Because my thrust in the UK-Germany housing was strenghtend after this accident. First of all I have to say, that I think a flooding can happen any time to you. I consider myself as a very careful and experienced diver and could not protect myself from this. It happened on Gozo (Malta) were the air was very humid and salty. I consider this as one reason for the flooding, because on the evening before I cleaned the o-rings about 3 times and was still not really satisfied with it. But I had to finish it someday, so finally I said to myself this must be enough, because it wasnt getting any better. Anyway, next day I went down to 30 metres, wenn I recognized strange bubbles on the LED-pictures. When I turned around the housing I saw that they were not from breathing or anything else outside the housing... OK - PANIC! Keep calm... I managed to make my buddy understand what's wrong and we started surfacing. SLOWLY...

What I always liked about the housing, was that the camera was centered in the middle by a metal plattform. So the water (if still little enough) could not reach the camera. THIS REALLY SAVED MY COOLPIX! I managed to turn the housing around so that the Water was gathering in the domeport. I looked from below through the dome in the housing to matain the right angle while surfacing. Usually the water will expand while surfacing. So to anyone who ever encounters this, just try to stay calm and keep the housing in the best position for the expanding water.

I managed to get out of the water and opened the housing without wetening the camera - thanks to the designers !! I called UK-GERMANY I they were really excellent in giving advice to solve the problem. I just had to leave the housing open for drying in the sun, because it is stuffed with a nice material (like fine carpet) that consumes water. By the evening my housing was dry again and the camera unharmed. Back in Germany we ran extensive tests with manufacturer not showing any fault. So I guess it were the humid conditions and some micro-salt on the o-ring. As mentioned before in this board 99% of all floodings are mistakes by the operater.

The camera and housing are still in heavy use and make excellent pictures. I have not encountered a flooding again since that. I can recommend the housing to everyone because I think that you have a really good chance in rescuing you equipment with it - "IF" something like this ever happens to you...

..I hope it does not!

Best regards, Andi

PS: If Anyone likes I can submit some pictures of the Flooding. I took them right afterwards with the intact Coolpix 990

[Edited on 28.2.2002 by andi]

[Edited on 28.2.2002 by andi]

Andi,

I am nervously smiling at your reply. As I move into the world of digital, I an seriously considering the D30 housing. I love my d30, and would love to take it underwater.

My prob is, that UK really makes the only housing for this camera, and you cant get it in the US unless you go thru Newfoundland Canada (of all places)

Anyway, my main concern was supprt and service. I hate to think I have to send this back to germany once a year for testing!!! Plus the though of putting 4,000 bux worth of camera and lenses inside a housing scares the bejeebers out of me.

Even insured, I find it a lot easier emotionally to deal with 600-800 bux worth

Thanks for posting you experience, It gave me a little more encouragement to go ahead and get the d30 UK housing.....but I have a ways to go.

Have a great day!

Bob

Hello Bob,

Please don't get me wrong. I think regular/anual servicing is really not necessary. The housing is very stable, as it's not mad out of plastic. The only thing I would ask for from time to time is new o-rings. But Uwe Kiel usually ships the housings with a spare o-ring for dome port and housing. A leak in the strong steel-parts itself seems almost impossible to me.

I just wanted to be sure that everything works fine again. Because after the flooding I suddenly questioned all my regular treatment with the housing and wanted to have second opinion from an expert. That is why I visited the manufacturer to discuss some reasons. After this for example I now tend to use less grease when preparing the camera.

This could have been one reason.

Concerning availability in your country I suggest to phone him personally or take a look at his distributors on the UK-Germany Homepage.

Also, to calm down everyone: I already took the camera down to 50m and it regulary goes to 20-30m. I have no bad feelings about this, anymore...

I mean it can happen with any housing, at any time... but with this housing I know how to handle it if it occurs an keep my equipment save...

You can even help yourself by just drying the housing and taking it down without the camera on the next day, to find out if it was just too much grease, salt or an o-ring. If you do not encounter any difficulties on the "check-dive" I would always continue to use the housing as usual...

So, stay dry! Andi

You only worry about flooding until you've done it once, and then you relax.

I flooded a gates housing with a pc-10 DV video camera in it. I was hurrying and closed the hatch on the little lanyard that holds the lens cap. That was on my first day with it, 3rd dive. Lessons: don't hurry, remove stupid little lanyards and straps, and get insurance. I use DEPP rather than the homeowners, because they seem more gear savvy and they have some extras, like rental coverage, that will let me continue to have fun on a vacation.

I had rented that gates housing, and I came away from it swearing I would only buy clear housings, like ikelites, so that I could see how well my o-rings were seated and so I could see leaks, but I ended up buying a light & motion housing. They use double o-rings on all the big user-servicable areas and latches that close slowly, unlike the ski-boot-buckle style snap-cam latches that many cameras use. I don't like those, I use them in a different application, and I've seen them close unevenly a few times (and really hurt my fingers, too).

There are leak detection systems out there that draw a vacuum in the housing while you are still on land, and then you wait a bit and see if any air leaks in. If air can't get in, water, which is thicker, really can't get in. They are a couple hundred bucks, or about the equivalent of 2 years of insurance, if I recall correctly. Between this or insurance or both, you can take any camera in the water and have peace of mind.

Plus, underwater digital is so much fun that if I flood a camera a year, it's worth it to me. For the number of pix I take, flooding a camera a year (as long as my housing was still good) would still be cheaper than film. My camera is $500, though, not $5000.

incidentally, while I agree that most accidents happen because of stupidity, I do have a nikonos V that would have flooded without yearly service, the o-ring on the door latch was bad and leaking, the latch was actually rusty on the side toward the camera wall, where I couldn't see it.

A personal effects rider really seems like the way to go for a few hundred bucks worth of camera gear.... I just signed up for it today and it'll cost just $11 per year for my new Olympus C4040 and Ikelite housing. Cheap piece of mind for sure.

~Todd