Water in my 28mm f/1.8

Hello everybody,

Yesterday- my tripod fell over that had my canon t1i mounted on it with my brand new 28mm f/ 1.8. You can see that there is condensation in the lens when I look through the viewfinder.

I really want to take this apart to clean up the water / condensation..

Do you recommend this? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

We need more information. What type of water are we talking about here? Salt Water, a stream, lake or what? What about water damage to the camera?

Hello again,

It was river water. It fell very quickly, but the top half of the camera was submerged. The camera will turn on for a second or two and then turn off. But, believe it or not, I'm more worried about the lens. That's why I'm wondering if I should take it apart to get that water out.

Thanks again!

Suffice it to say that if I had a lens and camera fall into water and was experiencing what you are they would get packaged up and sent off to the nearest Canon Service Center. I never try to repair anything myself, I do not have the appropriate tools to do that and what if you run into trouble reassembling the thing. Given the cost of these items I would suggest getting a professional to deal with them. Condensation (if that is all it is) will sometimes clear on its own over time. I think that you have more than simple condensation.

Boy, to start with, detach that lens and remove the camera battery and, if your camera has a detachable Date/Time battery, pull it out as well!

Then, there are these little packages of absorbent "stuff" you can pack them with which can help, I''ve heard of people having good results with them, but I don't remember what they are called. I do know that you want unused ones. So, if you don't want to send your equipment in for servicing, that is the approach people seem to prefer.

I'll tell you what I did with a lens that fell into river water (no camera attached): I saw water droplets in there. I turned on my oven to a very low heat and left the camera in it with the oven door open for a day, checked out the lens, and put it back in for another day or two.

After a while of that I saw no more moisture. This was a "consumer" 70-300 IS lens, and it wouldn't have surprised me if it was "belly up", but I put it on my 30D and it worked! And, it kept working all the time I had the lens! It's been a few years, and I don't know where the lens is any longer, but still...

A camera body would be another question to me, stuffed with electronics and whatnot...like I said, pull that battery/batteries...wh​at you do from there is, well, up to you I guess, although a trip to Canon would be the safest thing.

they are called desiccant. Many places sell them

http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …0_500_000_Silic​a_Gel.html

you can also use dry rice to do much of the same if you are cheap. And no, you don't pack your opened camera with rice kernels.

Ideally, you dry out the camera with desiccant BEFORE you turn it back on

I also told katekay to just send it to canon. but im sure that gel package things could also be a great idea.

Gel... and/or rice... or stick it in a humidity controlled box. Canon will charge you a boatload to clean out anything damaged by water.

Having done service on two way radios... when water gets inside onto the control boards it does baddddd things to the leads and solder runs.

If there is absolutely any salt in the water, they will start eroding quickly... and modern stacked boards can have water damage within the "layers" of the board... which are basically impossible to fix. To be honest, you should just send it in to canon.. and bite the bullet on repairs.

st3venb wrote in post #13295972
Having done service on two way radios... when water gets inside onto the control boards it does baddddd things to the leads and solder runs.

If there is absolutely any salt in the water, they will start eroding quickly... and modern stacked boards can have water damage within the "layers" of the board... which are basically impossible to fix. To be honest, you should just send it in to canon.. and bite the bullet on repairs.

Well, shipping off a wet camera will only tend to make it worse! But if he can follow the advice for getting it as dry as possible, and the camera and/or lens work as a result, well he has gained -- otherwise, yeah, a trip to Canon and probably have circuit boards replaces at a, well, cost!

Insurance is good for such occasions!

I would say it would depend on the lens. I recently bought a lot of old manual lenses on eBay which all had haze or fungus. I used to work on watch movements so I have no problem taking on small pieces. I was able to take the lenses apart and fully clean the elements and get them back together and now I have some nice old manual primes. I would NOT however break in to anything that had an autofocus motor in it... That just scares me that I would screw something up. There isn't much to a manual prime lens but once you put a motherboard and a motor in it, I'm done.

Ack - top half of the camera? That isn't good bud. Send it to Canon. Work over time!

Hi everyone!

I really appreciate all of your advice responses! They all helped greatly!

I'm going to end up sending it to to Canon most likely!

Thank you again,


Katie

Lens wise only ( coming from a mobile phone tech background so caveat emptor ) I'd put the lens in a tea towel ( non fluffy) and place that in an airing cupboard, or someplace in the house that is slightly above room temp. Then leave it for 24-48 hours or more in the hope that the h2O will evaporate slowly. ( this won't apply to salt water ).

Dessicant bags can work, open rice packing can leave small bits in akward places The above has fixed many smartphones but I've never tried it with a lens.

lettershop wrote in post #13294601
they are called desiccant. Many places sell them

http://www.bhphotovide​o.com …0_500_000_Silic​a_Gel.html
...

Holy cow; I'm ordering a bunch of those! I've been scrounging up the little, fabric packs out of shoe boxes and stuff