5D3 took a swim (halp)

I was doing a photoshoot, holding onto what was essentially a post in a wall as I stepped around a swimming pool. Pole came popping right out and sent me into the pool with my 5D3, 180mm F/3.5L and a 128 gig Lexar CF card and a 64 gig Sandisk microSD in an adaptor. I my back hit the bottom in a 4 foot deep swimming pool so it was not a trivial dunk. I did get it out very fast though.

CF card is fine.

microSD card is fine.

Lens is fine.

Shutter was firing by itself when the camera came out of the water. I pulled the battery immediately, and left it to dry for a while. When I put the battery back in the LCD was coming up as Error 30 so I sent it in to Canon Canada (CPS) for repair.

CPS sent me a repair estimate that said there was too much rust on the inside of the camera, that it was beyond repair, and enclosed an invoice for a new 5D3. Since it powered up and was able to diagnose itself at least to Error 30 I don't buy that it is a complete write off.

I told them to send it back to me disassembled and they did. Thing is they never really took it apart they just took off the case. There was some white residue on the inside which is probably left over from the water but there is no rust on anything. So I don't feel like they pulled the boards and tested to find out what needed replacing. Much easier to send me an invoice for a new camera. They didn't make any attempt to get it to work (no judgment there whether that is the right or wrong choice, just stating, they opened it up, had a look, then wrote me an invoice for a new camera).

At the same time I sent in an 85mm F/1.2L that the focusing ring had seized on. This had some exposure to water at some point but the seizing happened years after. They sent me back a repair estimate of $1,500 and said it needed a new USM motor. The thing is the lens autofocuses just fine so the motor I think must be fine. It's just the focusing ring is seized. So I was expecting them to take it apart and unjam the focusing ring.

Overall then my "repair bill" came to $5,000 and I just told them to do nothing.

I sent the two mated together. When Canon sent them back, I guess because I asked for the camera to be disassembled, they just stuck the lens in a plastic bag with the rear element exposed and packed it randomly with the camera. I was pretty surprised. Even if the lens is in need of repair there is no reason to expose the rear element to scratching during shipment and *further* repair.

Overall, it is feeling like it was not treated adequately so I am skeptical that this is something that should be thrown into the garbage as they imply.

I'm trying to figure out what my options are from here. Some photos of the irretrievably rusty interior of my 5D3 are attached. There's white residue in the bottom corner near where the clock battery goes. And a little bit in some other places but the boards look pretty untouched, and I think if they would have been absolutely unsalvageable then the unit would not power up at all? I say that as a question.

I'm looking for any suggestions to at least try to mitigate the financial damage. Sell it off like this, try with an alternate repair shop who will actually test it, whichever. I already bought a new camera based on Canon's response and it is en route.

Halp?

Not sure if what I posted will be accessible on high res, so I put low and high res versions of the images here:

http://www.chromatropic.com/5d3

According to Canon, an Err 30 is a malfunction with the shutter

It's toast man.  Get your insurance claim in, stat!

I'm a retired silicon valley reliability engineer. If you've read some of my numerous post on what to do and when to do it in the past you might have sent a perfectly working camera to Canon for a check up.

Instead, because you dried the camera without flushing it with de-ionized water first Canon is correct. Your camera is now toast.

Pure water (de-ionized water) is a fantastic insulator, you can put thousands of volts on two probes in a beaker of de-ionized water and virtually no electric current will flow. In fact it is used in the cleaning process during manufacturing for electronic equipment all the time.

When it's a salt water pool, ouch! And a chlorine pool is ouch too. They test the water every week to adjust the ph of pools so it was either an acid or a base but far from de-ionized water.

But still I recommend you carry at least a gallon of de-ionized water in the trunk of your car just in case. Turn it off, pop out the batteries, close the doors, rinse the exterior with DI and towel it dry. Open each door looking water intrusion, if it's there (and will be on such a bad dunk) rise it out with DI. Remove the lens, rinse it with DI. If the sensor cavity is wet rise it gently with DI.

Rinsing out a camera that submerged in water is what I'd call a Hail Mary Pass, but just drying it out will likely kill it off.

The ionic contamination left behind even when tap water dries can set up conduction paths between IC pins and circuit board traces that quickly become shorts after power is applied and copper starts to migrate down these paths.

Once you've rinsed with DI pat dry every thing you can safely and start the drying using a desiccant to dry the moisture out. I keep a brick sized desiccant with moisture indicator on the side sold for use in gun cabinets on hand along with a small space bag (a giant zip lock) for dying. It could take a day or two but you oven dry the desiccant (when the indicators say it is time) and resume when it cools.

If you are going to shoot around water you need to be prepared. Even if you never fall in again, some idiot can always run up a do a canon ball before he figure out it's a photo shoot.

We even have rouge waves that come ashore on Northern California beaches occasionally. It's only happened to me once but the water went from being 50-100 feet of beach to the cliff to lapping at the cliff in one wave leaving me in 2-3 feet of water half way to the cliff.

Assuming there's a reason why you can't make an insurance claim... it might be worth taking it to a non-Canon-authorized camera repair shop, and negotiating a price for them to open it up properly and have a look, and do their best to clean & fix it without buying any replacement components. If Canon are anything like Apple and other computer manufacturers, their 'repair' policy is to examine the machine and replace any 'affected' components, without even having a close look to see if simply wiping the affected components would fix the problem. Their 'authorized' repair centres will be under strict instructions to do the same.

As a last resort, if the damage is local to one corner and nowhere near the sensor or any optics, you could try suspending the exposed section in a bath of clean (boiled?) water again for a few hours, then giving it a scrub with some q-tips, then bathing again and repeating the cycle until there's no visible residue on the part, and the water looks clean on rinsing, and then put the camera on a low-heat radiator for DAYS to dry out completely. I've had some success with laptops in the past using this method.

Good luck!

<edit>Apologies - this was written at the same time as Phil was writing his more complete description of the de-inonised water thing</edit>

Sorry, I've got nothing. You did what I would have done. But I really appreciate your post and learned some good stuff from the other posters.

Sorry to hear about your trouble.  Here's another view, with electronics, especially when they've been submerged, even if they power up, you never really know how long they will continue to function.  I suggest that the only way Canon could assure a reliable repair was to replace everything.  The last thing they (and you) want is a camera being returned every few weeks/months for some random problem caused by water damage to a part they did not replace.

You indicated you were on a shoot, so I'll assume you're a pro - do you really want to take gear into the field which could fail at any moment?

Phil wrote:

I'm a retired silicon valley reliability engineer. If you've read some of my numerous post on what to do and when to do it in the past you might have sent a perfectly working camera to Canon for a check up.

Instead, because you dried the camera without flushing it with de-ionized water first Canon is correct. Your camera is now toast.

Pure water (de-ionized water) is a fantastic insulator, you can put thousands of volts on two probes in a beaker of de-ionized water and virtually no electric current will flow. In fact it is used in the cleaning process during manufacturing for electronic equipment all the time.

When it's a salt water pool, ouch! And a chlorine pool is ouch too. They test the water every week to adjust the ph of pools so it was either an acid or a base but far from de-ionized water.

But still I recommend you carry at least a gallon of de-ionized water in the trunk of your car just in case. Turn it off, pop out the batteries, close the doors, rinse the exterior with DI and towel it dry. Open each door looking water intrusion, if it's there (and will be on such a bad dunk) rise it out with DI. Remove the lens, rinse it with DI. If the sensor cavity is wet rise it gently with DI.

Rinsing out a camera that submerged in water is what I'd call a Hail Mary Pass, but just drying it out will likely kill it off.

The ionic contamination left behind even when tap water dries can set up conduction paths between IC pins and circuit board traces that quickly become shorts after power is applied and copper starts to migrate down these paths.

Once you've rinsed with DI pat dry every thing you can safely and start the drying using a desiccant to dry the moisture out. I keep a brick sized desiccant with moisture indicator on the side sold for use in gun cabinets on hand along with a small space bag (a giant zip lock) for dying. It could take a day or two but you oven dry the desiccant (when the indicators say it is time) and resume when it cools.

If you are going to shoot around water you need to be prepared. Even if you never fall in again, some idiot can always run up a do a canon ball before he figure out it's a photo shoot.

We even have rouge waves that come ashore on Northern California beaches occasionally. It's only happened to me once but the water went from being 50-100 feet of beach to the cliff to lapping at the cliff in one wave leaving me in 2-3 feet of water half way to the cliff.

Thanks Phil.

Is there are reason to simply rinse the camera with de-ionized water as opposed to submerging it in a container of it? Perhaps with one or two changes of the de-ionized water.

Would submerging it in or rinsing it with 97% isopropyl alcohol as a final step before drying have any negative effects? Luckily, I haven't had to deal with anything besides cell phones.

I was successful using 97% isopropyl alcohol on my daughter's cell phone that had gotten wet, dried leaving some white residue. I disassembled it and submerged the parts in the 97% isopropyl alcohol and wiped all residue off. I then dried it as much as possible and put the phone in the oven over night on its lowest setting (125 degrees Fahrenheit). Put the battery in the next day and the phone worked fine till it was replaced a year later.

Obviously, dSLRs are constructed differently than phones as there are moving parts. So that's why I'm asking. It's good to have a plan in mind if this should ever happen.

Thanks again.

chromatropic wrote:

"Instead, because you dried the camera without flushing it with de-ionized water first Canon is correct. Your camera is now toast."

Well it ends up that this is not so.

My feeling as I had written was that whatever board or component was affected could be replaced and the camera should be functional. I had written that it powered on and displayed an error code. Canon just opened it, saw water damage, wrote it off and sent me a bill for a new camera.

This is disservice in the highest degree. It's like if your car blows an exhaust manifold and you brought it in to the dealer, and the dealer just shrugged and says well, you need to buy a new car.

Who wins and who loses in that scenario? The dealer, the manufacturer win. The customer loses.

I sent the camera to Sun Camera Service ( www.suncameraservice.ca ) and talked to two other shops who had experience in bringing a water damaged 5D3 back to life. They all expressed measured confidence that it was possible. I picked Sun Camera Service because they're in Canada and I'm in Canada.

I'm going to make a full report and mention the other two shops once the camera comes back. Here's the list of damaged parts:

REPLACE SD-MAIN CABLE, BOTTOM-FRONT FPC, BOTTOM-MAIN FPC, MAIN PCB, SD-MAIN FPC, MIRROR BOX UNIT & AM FPC ASS'Y

They did a full cleaning then and I guess calibrated it all.

Cost to me was $620 for parts, $160 for labor, $25 for shipping back and $100 in tax for $900 Canadian (about $800 US).

Compare this to Canon who only removed the cover basically, saw water damage and punted without disassembling and testing parts. Their report was this:

"Upon Inspection tech found too much rust inside camera, on top cover, mirror box, back cover, front PCB, bottom PCB,.... condition beyond repair. Suggestion of replacement to new EOS 5D MARK III in exchange for damaged unit." About $3,100 US including tax. I would have to trade in my "condition beyond repair" camera in order to get this special price on a replacement unit.

So... I am much, much, much happier. Will take some photos with it and post them and make a full report as soon as it arrives and I get home from my current trip.

I think you're taking this too personally. Likely what they meant by "beyond repair" wasn't that they couldn't take it apart and diagnose what was wrong with it repairing only that part, it was that it wasn't worth the risk and time to them.

Lets say they spend a tech's full day diagnosing it, and it winds up it's $900 in parts and you decide to decline the repair. Or you give the go-ahead, get it back, and in a week or two something they missed (or unrelated) broke. They would either wind up with a very disgruntled customer, have to eat the costs of the additional repairs (since the camera they sent back to you should have been in "original working order"), or a combination of the both. It's for this very reason that when an engine blows, they don't just replace a cracked cylinder or rod and remount everything, they just install a new or rebuilt crate engine from the factory. Sure you can get that one rod replaced at a shop willing to take the time and effort to do so on your dime, but most manufactures are unwilling to accept that risk.

chromatropic wrote:

"Instead, because you dried the camera without flushing it with de-ionized water first Canon is correct. Your camera is now toast."

Well it ends up that this is not so.

My feeling as I had written was that whatever board or component was affected could be replaced and the camera should be functional. I had written that it powered on and displayed an error code. Canon just opened it, saw water damage, wrote it off and sent me a bill for a new camera.

This is disservice in the highest degree. It's like if your car blows an exhaust manifold and you brought it in to the dealer, and the dealer just shrugged and says well, you need to buy a new car.

Who wins and who loses in that scenario? The dealer, the manufacturer win. The customer loses.

I sent the camera to Sun Camera Service ( www.suncameraservice.ca ) and talked to two other shops who had experience in bringing a water damaged 5D3 back to life. They all expressed measured confidence that it was possible. I picked Sun Camera Service because they're in Canada and I'm in Canada.

I'm going to make a full report and mention the other two shops once the camera comes back. Here's the list of damaged parts:

REPLACE SD-MAIN CABLE, BOTTOM-FRONT FPC, BOTTOM-MAIN FPC, MAIN PCB, SD-MAIN FPC, MIRROR BOX UNIT & AM FPC ASS'Y

They did a full cleaning then and I guess calibrated it all.

Cost to me was $620 for parts, $160 for labor, $25 for shipping back and $100 in tax for $900 Canadian (about $800 US).

Compare this to Canon who only removed the cover basically, saw water damage and punted without disassembling and testing parts. Their report was this:

"Upon Inspection tech found too much rust inside camera, on top cover, mirror box, back cover, front PCB, bottom PCB,.... condition beyond repair. Suggestion of replacement to new EOS 5D MARK III in exchange for damaged unit." About $3,100 US including tax. I would have to trade in my "condition beyond repair" camera in order to get this special price on a replacement unit.

So... I am much, much, much happier. Will take some photos with it and post them and make a full report as soon as it arrives and I get home from my current trip.

It would be interesting to know if that list of parts is all the electronics or not. And of course a one year report on how the repairs held up.

I'm sure my Fujica Drive (my first camera) was unrepairable after a family member let it tumble down the steps at the Notre Dame Cathedral. The frame was bent with the lens sticking out at an odd angel and the light meter jammed by another crushed corner, All ready a total loss in my mind so I peeled off the rubber covering and went to work. It didn't take long with a machinist hammer, a punch, and a dial indicator to beat the machined brass frame back into reasonable shape, level the lens, and free the meter. Putting the rubber amour back in place was the the hardest part, adhesives has come a long way since then. And several years later while it still had a tattered look it worked fine. Well as fine a 35 mm 1/2 frame view finder fixed lens can be.

I hope your repairs are that successful in the long run.