What to do When You Kill Your Camera

Let's face it: accidents happen. Sometimes they happen to your beloved camera. This intructable is to help you deal with the aftermath.

Background story:

My wife loves me. So, she let us buy a brand new Nikon D5100. I was in heaven! This thing made my last DSLR seem like a point and shoot! I spent hours taking pictures (evidence on my flickr site here ) and was enjoying being creative again. One night I was trying to take photos of water droplets by my pool. I accidentally caught my toe on my tripod and the tripod, camera, and lens all went into the drink. The tripod made it. It was the sole survivor.

That was a sad day.

Step 1 Step One: React!

Something bad has happened to you camera. Your first step is to address that fact with quick action.

Don't freak out, just be calm and react.

Start by removing your camera from whatever bad situation it is in. Dropped in water? Fish it out of there! Hit the pavement? Pick it up.

Examine your camera for obvious signs of damage, like dents, scratches, cracks, water leaking out, etc. If it's not wet try turning it on.

What isn't working?

Now take that info to google. The great thing about the internet is that it connects people that have a lot of similar problems. Do a search online describing your problems and you'll find a lot things people in similar situations have tried. Some work. Some don't. This will give you an excellent starting point.

For me I read up and watched a youtube video that directed me to pack my camera in rice or kitty litter. It was good advice that got a lot of the moisture out, but unfortunately I had other damage that couldn't be fixed that way.

Comments

[arkangel1975]

years ago all you had to do was keep all the components wet untill you could properly dry them then they added electronics to the cameras which made it a little more difficult.

At least now a days that fact of digital obsolescence makes this a little less painless since dig cams arn't ment to run for 30 or more years like my minoltas.

One thing to consider you could try to resurrect it from a dropped dead cam on ebay because the water just fries the circuits, just watch out for the shutter that might get tricky too.

I dropped a Sony 24 to 104 ( yes the zeiss one I cried)in a puddle, took it apart and cheaned it to the best or my knowledge (being very careful with the nano coated elements). And everything worked great with it. Basically if you belive it to be a total loss experiment you never know what could happen

[CYNICALifornia]

An excellent suggestion, but I'm not confident enough in my assembly skills to tackle something like that quite yet.

[Alphonsus]

Step 5: Buy a Canon

:P

[CYNICALifornia]

It was a close race between the D5100 and the T3i, but ultimately I opted for the slightly better image quality and larger sensor (read: low light performance). I even rethought the decision a dew days ago when we were repurchasing the D5100.

I'm not going to say that Canon's are crap, because they are not. In choosing between the T3i and the D5100 there is no bad choice as they are both good . . . but I felt the D5100 was a better choice.

Then again, I'm not a hipster . . .

[grenho]

Why? Is it waterproof?