Help! My camera got wet.

On last weeks trip to the Cherokee National Forest my little digital camera lasted all of two days in the wet environment there. The area is a major watershed with many creeks and rivers, water trickling down rock faces and such. Lots of early morning fog, sometimes lingering for several hours.

The camera has dried out and is working fine now. I kept it in a plastic bag inside a Lowe Alpine camera case. Did I make a mistake with the plastic bag?

What is the best way to handle this problem?

Thanks to all!

Found this: (some of the things seem like they might work)

http://photo.net/digital-camera-forum/009C5E

Thanks f klock, just to clarify I kept the camera in a plastic bag during the trip, taking it out only to shoot pictures. I let the camera air dry in my room, but I do like the idea of placing the camera near a lamp in a box as advised in the link you gave.

I'm thinking maybe the plastic bag may have exacerbated the problem if the camera got wet during use.

Also thanks f klock for the hat I got from you, it worked great with a slight stretching, you can see me wearing it in several photos from my trip report.

The warming box described in the link above works well. I've used that method on cell phones many times.

A waterproof camera may also be something worth consider. My point and shoot recently died n the desert, and after much research, I replaced it with a Pentax W60. Better quality pictures than Olympus' line of tough cameras, a bit lighter, and a lot cheaper. Though the Pentax may not sound as bomb proof, cavers seem to hold it in high regard.

trouthunter said:

Also thanks f klock for the hat I got from you, it worked great with a slight stretching, you can see me wearing it in several photos from my trip report.

The hat IS Gore-Tex. Maybe you should wrap your camera inside it next time!!! (Glad you could make use of it.)

HaHa, Yes excellent recomendation.

both my cameras stay in leather cases. I've taken them up 60 miles of dusty bumpy trails on my quad, or on deep sea trips. honestly I've never had a water problem with them. if you'd like to keep your camera you can see about waterproof cases they have for most common cameras, they work very well and are submersible (most). If my cameras ever do get wet, i'd probably just take them apart and let them sit around for a little bit & clean off what I could.

See also Samung GX10/GX20 or Pentax K10D/K20D. These are weather sealed and will apparently survive a wide range of conditions. My Samsung GX10 did survive the rain forest. When not in use, it was stored in a fitting Samsonite carry bag with one pack of silica gel.

I may have used in light mist, and certainly not in rain.

Thanks stormbird,

The area I backpack in is considered a sub - tropic rain forest.

If it is not raining, it is foggy, if it is not foggy, it's fixing to rain.

I do need to get a more appropriate camera for these conditions. I'll look at the cameras you have mentioned.

I got an Olympus 1050SW from my wife, for my birthday. I really like it and it HAS been used in totally pouring conditions. (as well as in the lake and pool) SW stands for shock proof/waterproof. It's not exactly the D90 my wife has, but still, a nice point and shoot for outings

Thanks f klock,

hopefully I can get a better camera for my birthday, Sept. 7th.

Gee, I'll be 44 years old. My dad thinks that's funny, I don't!

44? That was so 2 years ago!

This spring on one of my first hiking trips down here around Flagstaff, I was hiking in the Secret Wilderness area of West Oak Creek Canyon. I had my Canon XTI digital SLR with me. I managed to hike the whole day up and down the creek which means wading in and out of the water for about the 12 miles I did round trip. Well, anyway when I was almost out of the canyon I slipped in the water and my camera went under for a few seconds. I immediately sat down on the first closest dry land, took the lense off, opened the battery compartment and took out the battery, opened and removed the flash card and left the camera, lense,battery and flash card parts out in the sun to dry as best it would for about 30 minutes. When everything seemed dry enough I put the camera back together and stashed it in my pack. When I got home about and hour later, I tried turning the camera on. It came on but the pixel screen on the back fluutered a moment then the camera shut down.

I thought, "Oh No I have ruined the most expensive camera I have ever had and dont know when I will be able to replace it"

I was camping at the time behind a friends house in my tent, which is like a greenhouse in the direct sun. I left my camera in my tent for about four days, trying to forget about it. Then one day I noticed the print function light was on, even tho the camera was turned off. So I turned it on and the camera seemed to work again. I clicked off a couple pictures and it was back. But then I noticed that whenever I took a shot and the image showed on the back screen it was sideways to the normal view. In fact when I would stop taking pictures then later click the picture view button the image showed upside down.

And when I download the images to my PC they come out upside down. Otherwise the camera works just as good as before the dousing. There seems to be no camera repair shops in town, so I have never figured out what happened with the sensor or image capture. I am just glad now four months later that it came back to life, even if a little screwed up.

This was almost as bad as when on a 28 day hike in the Grand Canyon about 10 years ago, my first digital camera, a Olympus got too much dust inside its inards and stopped working halfway thru the trip, causing me not to be able to take pictures for the second two weeks of the trip. It wasn't untill I took it in to a camera shop later that I found out it was going to cost more to clean and repair the camera, than it would to just buy a new one which took me a year later to do.

Ugh, tragic. Isn't it ironic that the best place to have a camera is in the outdoors, but that's also the worst place for it to be!

We were in a camera shop in Bar Harbor when a man came in on crutches. He had slipped on some wet rock in Acadia and busted his knee all up. He also smashed his 35mm camera in the fall. The shop was able to save the images by removing the roll, but the camera was toast. As some of you already know, images shot there may very well be worth more than the cost of a new camera!

I also just remembered when I visited Lake Placid for the first time in 1996. I bought a cheap instamatic 35mm camera and took a plane tour over the mountains and lakes there. When I got back and attempted to open the camera to get the film developed, it accidently popped open, revealing that though the camera had been showing it was advancing, the roll had not actually moved, so none of the 24 pictures I had shot had been taken. The flight cost me $50 and I did not take it over again.

Another time with another cheap instamatic 35mm camera in Yosemite, I shot the roll and sent it off to be developed. Almost all the images I got back had a finger in them because thru the view finder I could not see exactly what the camera saw and the digit stuck into the pictures so far as to make them useless.