Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/04/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]on 4/3/01 6:07 PM, henry at henry@henryambrose.com wrote: > Seriously - no problems for the camera or lens. But boy was I shocked for > a moment! Luckily sandbox sand is usually that coarse stuff. If it's wet, even better as it sticks to surfaces rather than sliding into crannies. The really nasty sand is that fine, fine dry beach sand. my wife dumped our brand new DV camera into exactly this stuff last summer (she was trying to stop a dog fight). Sand worked its way right into the take-up mech. I went to radio shack and bought a full set of those little screwdrivers and as much blow-air as I could afford. Then I took the little sucker to tiny bits and blew, blew, blew. Reassembled enough to play a tape, didn't work, so blew blew blew some more (holding the camera upside down so the sand dropped out). Finally it came back to life. I was confident enough to do this because I've had to disassemble cameras and VTRs on the road before (they're very modular: the key is knowing when to stop). Unless you feel happy doing this really all you can do in the worst-case scenario is get whatever surface stuff you can off and take it to someone to disassemble. Funnily enough, dropping a camera, even a $100,000 video camera, into water isn't nearly so bad. Oftentimes you can just dry it out and astoundingly everything works as normal. The exception that proves the rule, though, is what happened to a cameraman I know who had just invested in a new digitbeta camera. These things cost the same as a house, and this guy had bought it to rent out with himself. Unfortunately he had forgotten to up the insurance on his equipment, which was set at about $30,000 as he had previously had a beaten up old Aaton or something. So his first shoot is a swimming pool. He puts down the camera on the pool surround and instantly someone dives in, knocking it into the water. Cameraman dives in in his clothes and pulls the camera out, thinking 'I'll just let it dry out and say a few Hail Mary's'. But it turns out highly chlorinated water and circuit boards do not mix... and now the guy is in the hole to an extent I do not even want to think about... - -- Johnny Deadman http://www.pinkheadedbug.com