I fed my digicam with milk...

[chaoliang]

...and it didn't like it.
The story: I put one package of milk in my bag and wanted to bring it to my office for the breakfast. I didn't check if the package was closed.
My bag is waterproof so I found only much later that everything swam in milk, including my french course book and my digital camera. I have to buy the book again (was new) and almost definately ANOTHER camera! I paid more than 500 Euros for it about one year ago. What a mass! I never drunk such expansive milk before!

[az]

Expansive indeed!

AZ

[Lizzard[MPE]]

dear god the poor digicam

[Helevitia]

might as well frame the camera and put it on the wall for a few years so you can atleast tell stories about it to get some of your money back in conversations.

[Duty]

Originally posted by Helevitia
might as well frame the camera and put it on the wall for a few years so you can atleast tell stories about it to get some of your money back in conversations.

With a little GOT MILK sign under it...

I did the same with water and an antique 35mm camera when I was in college. But I didn't find it for a month and the camera was destroyed. It sucks.


Jeff

[chaoliang]

I've kept every lid of the camera open to dry it up since two days with the hope, that some day I put in the battery and the screen lights up!

[az]

Thoroughly rinse with warm water before! But I don't think there's much hope: contacts and PCBs will have corroded, and maybe there was even a short circuit because the camera was not completely turned off, and some chips are fried. The sensor would need thorough cleaning, as would the lenses. You can't do that yurself and put it all back together with the necessary tight tolerances.

AZ

[chaoliang]

I didn't have much luck with this Nikon SQ. It was much too expensive and too picky (drank even no milk).
What about a Powershot A75? It is sold for 222 Euro in the local stores here. I'm not fond of the idea of extra cost of rechargalbe batteries and charger though. I think I don't need more pixels than 3MP.

[Brian Ellis]

Phone the importer, explain what happened and ask whether they can clean it and check it out. I had an accident with a camera once and the importer repaired it for very little. It's still going strong!

The classic one was when I was working for Kudelski, the makers of the Nagra tape recorders. A guy came in with a Nagra III over his shoulder. He explained he had been the sound man of a news team shooting in Viet Nam. They were actually filming along the banks of the Mekong when someone, presumably VC but who knows?, opened fire on them. The Arriflex camera, on a tripod, took a direct hit, beyond all repair, but the crew hit ground very fast. As is usual when filming, the sound guy had his Nagra round his neck, but the movement of hitting ground threw it straight into the river. He fished it out, full of mud and silt and goodness knows what else. When he got back to his hotel, he washed the whole thing, inside and out, in tap water, shook out as much water as possible then dried it, open, in the sun for a few hours, put in new batteries and a tape and, lo, it worked! He brought it in for cleaning, and checkover and we checked it over, as is, and it was 100% within specs. We dismantled and cleaned all the parts and recalibrated it and the guy went away very happy, with 200 fewer Swiss Francs in his pocket. Its amazing what precision goods can survive. (For those who have never heard of the Nagra, it was THE pro portable sound recorder for synchronising with a pro movie camera. 90% of Hollywood location and news/reportage shots from, say, 1960 through to 1980 had the sound recorded on a Nagra - and they were bloody expensive toys, 5 to 10 kbucks for a tape recorder!)

[SpiralDragon]

ah ... the nagra... made to last... we have one here at uni... i has endured quite alot but it still works

[az]

One guy at the only other forum I frequent lost his Dimage A2 digital Camera (with a large protruding 28-200mm Equiv. lens) while doing somewhere between 100 and 200 km/h on his motorbike. The cam was only stored in a 5mm padded bag - the bag was trashed, of course, but the cam survived with only two scratches! (it fell on the asphalt, not on the grass)

AZ

[VJ]

Leica (and I believe Hasselblad) instruct that if you drop your - fully manual - camera in water (e.g. sea), you must not take it out of the water but bring it to them in water. Only then can they make sure there is no damage...

Jörg

[az]

Though the sea is salt water, which corrodes, so be careful with that. Anyway, should any technical device happen to fall into water, take out the batteries, thoroughly clean with tap water, wait for it to dry completely, pray

AZ

[chaoliang]

It should be possible to build digital cameras (almost) as solid as mechanical ones or not?

[Wombat]

No. Mechanical ones are much simpler, chemically speaking. No CCDs and whatnot.