We have put our investigators’ hats on to figure out what caused the leak in the camera housing. We had determined that the leak was either caused by user error (me) or by an actual leak in the housing.
The seal got very sandy when I got tossed into the water by a wave on an exit of a dive, so one idea is that I had not got all the sand off the seal when I cleaned it and that caused a leak. When we got home, I cleaned the seal, re-greased it and cleaned the opposite side of where the seal sits. I then closed the housing and placed it in a sink full of water. After a couple of hours, the housing was still dry inside.
When I got tossed into the water, I had hit the housing on the rocks as I fell. I did not think it impacted that hard. My son suggested we do a pressure test on the housing to check for leaks caused by cracks. We are lucky that we have a recreation complex that has a 15 foot deep dive tank for platform diving. I took the housing with me to the pool and sunk it in the dive tank and left it for about 5 minutes. When I reeled it up, there was water in the nose of the housing. It was leaking.
Mur and I took the nose of the housing apart and, using a magnifying glass, searched for cracks. We found what looks like some cracks, but we cannot tell if they actually go right through the plastic. If these are not cracks, maybe the screws, rubber seal etc got jarred when I fell and loosened up. We dried everything off and put it back together. We discussed taking it to the dive tank to test it again, but we are wondering if we will be able to trust the housing again.
We can buy used Canon PowerShot cameras online for about $60. So, if we spend the $60, get a new camera, go on holidays and have the housing leak, we are out $60 plus dive pictures.
Or we can just buy a new camera/housing. We looked at SeaLife’s underwater cameras yesterday, as our strobe flash is a SeaLife. They have a couple of really nice cameras. mmmm….I like this idea. I think I am leaning towards this option.
So, the camera and the housing look like they have reached the end of their lives.