Equipment Swim
 | Sometimes by accident you have to swim your equipment in water. And even more so if the equipment gets swimming in salt water or our beloved sea. I'll describe my first equipment swim and how to act when equipment falls into water.. |
Accident
The day before a nice photo session took place, and seeing strong wind I removed both the umbrella and other light modifiers from the flash that could stand in the wind's way and fell into water to shoot. But suddenly a stronger wind arose and waves knocked over a stand with the turned on flash Nikon SB-800 and Pocket Wizard radio trigger. Both devices were in the water for about 15 seconds, but that was completely enough for them to sink. I quickly ran and quickly took everything out. Rescue
The first thing to do in such cases is to remove batteries or other power sources. If the equipment fell in fresh water, then all you need is to dry it and hope everything works, but if it falls in salt water, then there are bigger problems. Because salt water reacts with metals and some electronic components even corrode, therefore the first step is rinsing with distilled water. This procedure should be done as quickly as possible. Distilled water is used in cars, so you can buy it at any Statoil and other stores. So the first task is to rinse the salt off the equipment. It is highly recommended to disassemble the device and then rinse.
Soak in distilled water and keep for several hours. Then replace with fresh distilled water and keep for a day. And repeat this rinsing process about 3 times. Total process at least 3-5 days. Then if possible, unscrew the device and blow out and dry thoroughly. Dry for several days as well. After all these procedures you can then try to turn on the device, but you must make sure the device is completely dry. The same should be done with any other electronic device: mobile, camera, etc. The biggest mistakes are made in haste, when too little rinsing and too little drying happens. If you rinse too little, then even if the device starts working, the salt remaining inside slowly corrodes contacts and after a month the device no longer works. If the device isn't dried properly, then turning it on short-circuits it again. Good luck with rinsing and drying!
Result (updated)
After swimming the result is completely opposite to my predicted results. Nikon SB-800 flash survived and now works perfectly. But Pocket Wizards don't work. They turn on and lights blink, but they no longer send or receive radio signals.
Comments
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||