Fernando Sanz , Aug 17, 2004; 03:54 a.m.
Hi there,
I have a small P&S digital camera which has been exposed to a very
wet environment (spending the night on the roof of my car, up here in
Scotland). Could anyone give me an advice about how to get it dry
again (assuming some water might've gotten inside of the body)?
So far I thought that my camera was undestructible; I've been skiing
with it (falling all the time, almost breaking my neck), I've dropped
it at home, I've dropped at work (offshore) on a steel surface, I've
used on pipes at 60-70 degrees and pipes at just 1 degree, Ive taken
pictures while swimming in the sea... And still working, but I think
the night outside might've been a bit too much :(
Thanks for any advice
David Haynes , Aug 17, 2004; 09:42 a.m.
More than 20 years ago I dunked a Yashica-Mat 124G twin-lens MF camera on a
canoeing trip. It had so much water in it that it literally poured out when the back was
opened to remove the film.
What we did was to set our electric oven on the lowest "warm" setting, crack the oven
door, and bake overnight.
Amazingly, the camera worked perfectly for years afterward.
We left the camera back open during the drying process, which of course you couldn't
with a digital camera. Also, this was an all-metal camera body. I don't know if that
degree of heat would cause damage to your camera if the camera has a plastic body.
J. W. Wall 
, Aug 17, 2004; 09:49 a.m.
Contact the manufacturer?
Mike Smith , Aug 17, 2004; 10:58 a.m.
If it were my problem, I would take out the batteries, the memory card and open anything that could be opened and leave to air dry in a warm room for a week, trying to apply any heat would cause more problems than it would solve with all the plastic and sensitive electrical componants in cameras these days.
Godfrey DiGiorgi 
, Aug 17, 2004; 11:22 a.m.
A technique I've used to dry almost anything electronic:
- open all possible apertures in the device
- remove battery
- place on a table about 12 inches away from a lamp fixture with a 40W incandescent light
bulb
- find a box big enough to cover the device and the lamp so that the lamp is no closer
than 8 inches from the box
- remove the bottom of the box and make a big vent (about 6 inches square) in the top.
- cover the device and the lamp with the box
- let "cook" in this warming box for a few days
An amazing number of things have dried out and come back to life when this has been
done.
Godfrey
Dave Nance , Aug 17, 2004; 02:00 p.m.
Here's a story about successful use of low-heat oven baking to dry out a Nikon Coolpix 5000. I found it looking for another story about a submerged-and-dried-out digital camera, which I remember reading about here at photo.net several years ago. Some guy who accidentally dunked his camera in a stream, and dried it out (by holding it out the window of his car while he drove, if I remember correctly), found that it produced images with weird color and other distortion effects. Serendipitous, and fascinating. I can't find that story any more, though!
Fernando Sanz , Aug 17, 2004; 03:47 p.m.
Thanks for the replies everyone,
finally I've used the boiler room :-)
At first the camera's screen seemed a bit blurry, but now it's back to life!
I really thought I'd have to get a new one after seeing all that water in my camera.
And now back to take some more photos...
Fernando
