How to properly maintain your underwater camera after divingShow Video Details ↓ [silence]Instructor: We're going to talk about care and feeding of your camera this time. This procedure is probably going to be taking place in your hotel room after your day of diving. Make it a point that when you're opening it up any time during the day or night that the camera casing is dry. When you do open it up, make sure you open it with the lens up and the case opening coming down like this. This will allow you to slide the camera out very quickly. At the same time it will eliminate any chances of water working its way inside the housing. When you're looking at it, make sure that the o-rings aren't damaged or nicked in any way. Make sure they're clean, make sure, if necessary, you can put some more silicone gel on the o-ring itself and make sure the o-ring, as you're inspecting it again, that there's no nicks or cuts or bruises on this little boy. You can use cue tips to help clean out the grooves along here of any old silicone gel that might be in there. Again, make sure that there's no residual fibers from the o-ring left over from the cue-tip inside the o-ring groove here because again that will create problems. Using a lint-free cloth, wiping the outside of the housing down is good. Again, lint-free. You want to make that point. When you're ready to put the camera back in, make sure the o-ring's in place, aren't any errors in any other way, slide the camera in, close it down, snap it shut. What I make it a habit of is just taking the o-ring into my bathroom sink, immersing it in fresh water, make sure I don't see any leaks and I leave it in my bathroom for the day or the evening with the window open so it can be acclimated to the outside environment. A lot of people have problems when they take the camera out of the air conditioned room that the lens inside will fog up. So if you keep it acclimated in your hotel room, in the bathroom with the window open, it will be almost the same temperature as outside. When you get on the boat, find the camera bucket. Don't put this in a mask bucket because the lubricants that are part of the mask de-fog will actually affect the o-rings. Make sure they have a separate camera bucket for you so that, again, the camera itself can acclimate itself to the water temperature and then when you're ready to dive, just have him hand you the camera. Don't jump into the water with the camera. You could blow out your o-ring seal. So when you're diving you're going to have a great time. When you come back up, make it a point to hand the camera up to the dive-master on the boat. Have him put it back in the camera bucket and then when you want to pull it out, let it soak for a while, let it dry off enough if you need to change your batteries or anything like that. If you follow these simple steps, you're never going to have a problem with your camera and you're going to come back with a lot of great pictures from your trip. So enjoy yourself and happy diving. |