ex1 hit by wave

G

gillatineny

Active member
so im down shooting a surf film in the dominican. Using my ex1 and my sr-12 for water clips...my friend was shooting on the ex1 from the beach while i was in the water. He carelessly leaves the camera on a towel on the beach...as i was exiting the water a rouge wave came up and jus knocked the s@%T out of the camera...like it was totally exsposed...theres definitely moisture in the lens and im sure everywhere elese. The camera was off and the battery was out when this happend...ive tried to dry it and open some of the vents buts its nearly impossible and i dont wanna make anything worse. my cards that were in the camera at the time of the wave still work as do the batteries. Any advice on what i should do from here would be helpful....
 
Salt water is definitely not good for electronics. Dry it out thoroughly, then try to power up. If that doesn't work, then time to send it in.
 
Don't even try to fire it up. If there's moisture in the wrong place you'll fry something.

Get it to Sony asap and see if anything can be done.

If not, then lesson learned: Don't leave equipment unattended or unprotected below the high water mark.

Also, hope that your friend will take some responsibility and offer to help cover the cost of repair or replacement.
 
Put it in a warm room and give it MANY days to dry out. It will probably dry out and be fine. The "catch" is if there is enough dryed salt that's inside somewhere that can create a problem. I'm guessing you'll be fine. Lens might not work as well though (will feel gritty).

It's quite common for people to stick computer keyboards in the dishwasher to clean them after a spill. The key is to dry them out throughly, as any moisture will create a short circuit.

Cross your fingers.
 
Any saltwater making contact with any bare metal will corrode it, and sooner than you think. It's not going to just "go away" or heal itself without a thorough cleaning. If it's sitting between dissimilar metals it will feed a destructive electrolysis process which can eat away fine wiring, cut through copper traces and pitt plated surfaces. Electrolysis has eaten holes in aluminum boat hulls.

Getting the work done "on time" is not a matter of days -- it can be a matter of hours. To be honest, if you have visible liquid water on the inside, anything it made contact with that's made of unprotected metal might be toast by the time the sun rises the next morning. But it won't hurt to at least get it looked at.

Trust me on this one -- I've worked with cameras around saltwater for quite sometime and have seen how even stainless steel will rust when exposed to saltwater. Salt will crystallize, creating an abrasive material that will mess up all contacts including the tiny ones in the SxS card slot.

The entire camera will have to be disassembled, cleaned, re-lubed and reassembled.

In the old days of 35mm mechanical SLRs, the procedure for a flooded camera was to dump it into a bucket of chilled fresh water and get it to the camera repairman immediately. The fresh water would flush as much salt out as possible and the lower temperature would slow down corrosion.

Get the camera to the nearest Sony repair station.

If it's unrepairable, keep it as a prop. I'm sure someone could use a camera like that every once in a while.
 
thanks for all the help...im stuck down here till midweek and to ship things from here, especially this camera is kinda risky.,...haha eventhough its prob already toast...but ya ill try to do wut i can... thanks again...so bummed
 
Something similar happened to me years ago in Central America...I called my friend who was a technician for Panasonic and he told me to immediately put the camera inside a ziplock bag, seal it and put it inside a shirt drawer...after 5 days the bag showed lots and lots of condensation...but I was able to fire it back up with no problems...of course..as soon as I got back to the US i sent it out for repair.
 
I have also heard that rice has some effective drying properties for electronics. When you are that desperate, you'll try anything, so I thought I would just add that to all of the other great (and best) advice.
 
The key here is to dry the insides. I remember when people would drop their pagers or cell phones into the toilet, they would put it in a sock and throw it into the dryer. It works after that.

The fact that you're dealing with salt water instead of sh*t water might be a big problem though.

If you can't get to a repair station asap, here's what I recommend. Shake out as much water as you can, then buy a drybox and as much dessicant as you can get your hands on. I don't think you'd want to throw the EX1 in a dryer, would you? :)

I feel your pain man.
 
well back when i had a problem with my sony VX1000, I had moisture in the camera, what i did was left the tape deck open over night and put some of those packets you get in a shoe box in there, the ones that eat up the moisture, problem cleared up overnight. I'm not sure if you're situation will be the same because i'm comparing moisture to a tital wave, but i thought i'd try to help =)
 
The issue here is salt water. I had a phone that was dropped into freshwater, pulled it apart, put it in a ziplock with desiccant a few hours later all good.

Same phone later took a dip in salt water. Instant corrosion, I ran it straight to the phone shop and nothing they could do, you could see the extreme damage that was done on the board under the sim card, in the prior fresh water experience, there was nothing. I wouldnt bother turning it on etc, just send it in ASAP.

Oh the one thing that saved me was insurance. I hope you have some.
 
Noel Evans said:
The issue here is salt water. . .Same phone later took a dip in salt water. Instant corrosion . . .
Click to expand...

EXACTLY!

Those who haven't experienced salt water wouldn't understand. You can't solve it by drying it. Salt isn't just corrosive. In solution it's also conductive. Power up a piece of gear that's still damp with salt water and you might fry something because of an unseen short circuit.

Try this experiment: get a copper penny and a nickle. Put a piece of paper towel soaked with salt water between them. Attach an electrode to the nickel and an electrode to the penny, and connect them to a sensitive voltmeter. Presto -- a battery!

That's what powers the electrolytic process. And that will break down everything that the salt water is touching, whether the camera is powered up or not. The tiny amounts of chlorine liberated from that reaction could also complicate matters by attacking other materials.

The salt has to be completely removed or the corrosion won't stop.

Frankly, if the camera doesn't get professional attention within a few hours, it'll suffer the same fate as Noel's cellphone.

Just a few words of advice: Whenever I'm near or on the ocean (which is 90% of what I'm doing now), any electronic equipment is either wrapped, covered or stowed away.

And my cellphone is waterproof! :-)
 
sony use new type of chips which got no legs. if the water get in, it will be trapped under the chips. those chip are bonded to the board by hundreds of little in balls under them act as binder and connectors.

you have no way of bringing it back to life. I have had the mainboard on my A1U changed for $700 ++

EX1 will cost much more.
 
1. Beat the sh*t out of your friend.
2. Find new friends who are camera savy and intelligent
3. Take pictures of friend doing something like cheating on wife and blackmail friend into giving you 6,000 dollars for new camera.


lol.
 
ive heard some thing about having an alcohol bath nearby incase the camera gets hit by saltwater. I hear that it helps break it down...now its obviously too late for that but just for future reference....any other tips or advice besides not being a dumbass and lettin ur friend shoot on ur ex1
 
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