HELP. 430EX vs. Creek

So during a shoot today, one of our Canon 430EX speedlights fell into a creek, was in the water for one second, and was quickly scooped up....

What are the chances that it will survive and what can we do? I shaked it for a while until there wasn't any obvious water coming out of it. I also removed the batteries and they actually appeared to be dry inside.

I thought I might take the rocket blower to it in an effort to blow out the areas around the buttons and seams, but I just don't know if I would be doing more harm than good.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

I would say open it up and blow dry the thing then just test it

Best of luck!

Put it in a bag of rice for a couple days.. Should help a lot.

Open it up... as in... take it apart?
It does look rather simple to take out the screws on the bottom near the mount and the back of the flash head.... anyone have experience opening these?

I would say just let it dry for about a week (i heard rice works well for absorbing the water as someone already mentioned.

Whatever you do, DON'T turn it on until it is 100% dry because you may short the electronics in the flash.

mminnig wrote in post #8449917
So during a shoot today, one of our Canon 430EX speedlights fell into a creek, was in the water for one second, and was quickly scooped up....

What are the chances that it will survive and what can we do? I shaked it for a while until there wasn't any obvious water coming out of it. I also removed the batteries and they actually appeared to be dry inside.

I thought I might take the rocket blower to it in an effort to blow out the areas around the buttons and seams, but I just don't know if I would be doing more harm than good.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Sorry about your accident... Hope this will make you feel a bit better.


Canon 300D survival story

My wife dropped her Rebel into a basin in a park... Muddy water, ducks all around... It took several minutes to fish the camera out (It's been fully submerged)...
The lens died . No chance to save it.
I started to work on the body. I open it for better ventilation. Waited for 5 days. Turned it on... It worked! Took few images.
Bought 4 gallons of distilled water. Open the body again and washed it in the bowl with distilled water. I changed water over and over until no more debris was coming out of the camera. Took me about half an hour.
I let it dry for 5 more days...
The camera still works ! It's been 5 years...


I don't know if you want to try washing your flash, but let it dry!
The reason I washed the camera in distilled water to prevent electronic from corrosion because of all the minerals in the "dirty" water...

To follow up on this story.... I opened the battery door and sat it on my desk for a day. Then, I placed it in a bag with rice for two days. With three shoots in the next three days, I couldn't wait any longer to find out if it was dead...

Put the batteries in. Powered it on. Listened as it seemed to take a little longer to charge up. Hit the test button and everything worked like new. Wow. Turning it off and on again seemed to resolve the slow initial charge time and now it is firing away beautifully.

Canon gets my two thumbs up!

i guess you got lucky!
two of my friends 580ex's fell into the pacific ocean for a second
he let it dry for a couple of days and the things were just bad
all the lights stayed on and also the lcd panel

everything was on even tho the switch was turned off

i got a quote from canon and they said it would cost over 300 to fix

SnlpeR wrote in post #8462867
i guess you got lucky!
two of my friends 580ex's fell into the pacific ocean for a second
he let it dry for a couple of days and the things were just bad
all the lights stayed on and also the lcd panel

everything was on even tho the switch was turned off

i got a quote from canon and they said it would cost over 300 to fix

I'd guess that's the salt. That's why I washed my camera in distilled water.

Water itself does not conduct electricity its the salt or other impurities in the water that conducts and causes a short circuit. This is why you can submerge a PC inside mineral oil as the fluid conductance itself is nill while still maintaining good heat transfer properties.

http://www.lenntech.co​m/water-conductivity.htm