Anyone hear of this?

GJMPhoto

Three weeks ago, I took my Canon 5D to a football game in the rain. I had a 300 on it and changed it to my 24-70. Unfortunately, as fate would have it, a wind gust blew a bit of water into the camera body as I was changing the lens...not a lot...but a spray. Anyway, everything was fine and I went on shooting.

A few days later, the autofocus intermittently stopped on that lens and at the same time, the shutter would appear to be in bulb setting. Then it would clear itself with no problems. No other lens had a problem...With some experimentation (I'm a software developer, so I debug by retrying) I was able to determine that it only happened when I zoomed to 24mm (as wide as possible). The lens was bound for Canon when...

The problem stopped. In fact, the problem has been gone for 2 1/2 weeks of shooting - no issues....not one.

So my questions for you Canon / camera experts:
1) Have you ever heard of this happening?
2) Why did the problem happen only at 24 mm?
3) Why did it go away?
4) Do you think I'm safe?

Thanks in advance!
- Gary.

aj986s

I'm no expert. But my guess is that some moisture was creating an intermitent electrical short. If the lens was not forcibly dried out, the moisture may have persisted for a while. I'm guessing once it dried completely, the short disappeared.

Whenever something electronic of mine gets wet, my first reaction is to remove the battery. Water alone usually doesn't cause much harm. But running current through it can lead to corrosion and or unintended behaviour & consequences in the electronics. I make an effort to try and dry out the equipment as quickly and sanely as possible, and usually it recovers just fine. However, saltwater is another matter......

Code Blue

My best educated guess is that when the water got introduced into the lens, it might have been in such a way that it only started to "short out" the connections when the lens was zoomed to 24mm, and every other position was fine.

as for why it didn't happen again I would say that the moisture simply evaporated. I had a friend who had this happen with a laptop. We were at a hotel and he brought his laptop to the jacuzzi. As fate would have it he tripped while walking to the steps and the laptop bounced off the floor and right into the tub, completely sinking to the bottom !

As luck would have it I simply removed it, dried it out, took the case apart and let the entire thing air out for a week. Seems that when he dropped it, the first bounce off the floor simultaneously set off the shock sensor for the hard drive which shut it off, and made the battery unlatch and thereby turning the entire laptop off, saving his precious 2k dollar piece of plastic !!!

Art Scott

start watching all of your connections for signs of corrosion or simply darkening of the contacts....if this happens try cleaning with a pencil eraser to keep a good contact going.

GJMPhoto

Thanks guys...

Art: I'm familiar with that eraser trick...and I will be vigilant!

Thanks!

rpcrowe

This is a good advertisement
This is a good advertisement for using a two camera system.

Sure, two cameras are heavier and can (but not necessarily do) cost more than a single camera however, a two camera system will eliminate (or at least reduce) the vulnerability of your camera when changing lenses in the field.