Weather-sealed gear and lens front element

cba_melbourne wrote:

TheEye wrote:

Water droplets bead right off, especially the bigger ones.

Lothar-Günther Buchheim was a war correspondent in the Kriegsmarine in WW2. He is the author of the novel Das Boot which was made into an equally famous movie. I have read most of his books and his way of shooting and his equipment was discussed in his book U-Boot Krieg, if I am not mistaken. He also talks about it in his novel Das Boot. He was shooting with Leica cameras and lenses and used a piece of window leather in an effort to keep the lens as clean as possible. There are many pictures he took that were taken at high seas in stormy weather with him and the equipment being doused by seawater and ocean spray. Definitely worth an online search. If he could get good shots 80 years ago with his gear, we have no excuse to be water-shy.

His Leica was paid for by the Reich Propaganda Ministry. And those U-boot's had an average life expectancy of a little over one year. That would include the crew... and the war correspondent on board. Two thirds of U-boot crews never made it back home. I am sure Mr Buchheim was not overly preoccupied with salt water ruining the Leica issued by Joseph Goebbels. Cameras are easily replaced - not so sons, husbands and fathers.

BTW, like most other German companies, during the war Leica was made to employ slave laborers too.

Your off-tangent rant is appreciated. I don't disagree with what you are saying but fact is that we don't need to be water-shy when using weathersealed cameras. My example was merely meant as an example to reduce fear of water. I did not intend to provoke a tirade.

Here are a few photos when I got caught in a sudden downpour in Saigon. I quickly got under a shallow awning, but was still getting quite wet. It was really raining cats and dogs! It was very difficult to keep rain off the front element and some photos were ruined because of it.

Click on original to see a better, sharper image. The photos in a dpreview thread are highly compressed and soft.

Sony A700 + Sony 18-250mm f3.5-6.3

Sony A700 + Sony 18-250mm f3.5-6.3

Sony A700 + Sony 18-250mm f3.5-6.3

Sony A700 + Sony 18-250mm f3.5-6.3

Henry Richardson
http://www.bakubo.com

Today I was searching for an old post of mine in the Sony A-mount forum and while doing that I stumbled across this old other one of mine from 2007 that is related to the subject of this thread. An incident concerning water I had in 1995:

my experience with SLRs/DSLRs and rain

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/24732188

Incidentally, if you want you can read my trip report with links to the photo album:

Irian Jaya/West Papua New Guinea Trip Report

http://www.bakubo.com/Irian%20Jaya/ij-report.htm