Yesterday, after about 48 hours of drying, I was quite confident there was no more moisture left in my terribly misfortunate camera. I had waited two days – longer than I really thought necessary – because I knew that pushing current through the delicate circuits while still wet would in all likelihood kill it dead.
But, reason and impatience finally overcame apprehension, so I grimaced a little, loaded a battery, and flipped the dial to on. The screen lit up in the dark gray color scheme I use, sort of a utilitarian emo look, but I wasn’t convinced. Surely there were more sinister problems lurking out of view. I started flipping through dials, taking test shots, checking focus, removing the lens and watching the mirror actuate, growing increasingly suspicious: I couldn’t find anything malfunctioning.
After a day of shooting, I can say with confidence that absolutely no functions of the camera were affected by the accident. This is truly astounding. Really, look at what that slice of space-time looked like:
The camera was fully submerged without any sort of underwater housing or protection. This still amazes me. I use a Nikon D40, which unlike professional cameras, it lacks the slightest bit of weather sealing. All of the buttons and dials are surrounded by air gaps, not O-rings (which, as a SCUBA diver, I believe to be some of the most incredible – and incredibly simple – objects ever created), and the lens has no seal to prevent water from leeching in. Props to Nikon – I’m just astounded and thrilled to have a not destroyed camera.
Also, I finally finished playing with Hugin, an open source panorama stitching program, which I believe to be the best in existence, besting even Photoshop CS4. I love when open source software pwns. Here’s the result, about 210 degrees of a stormy Lake Michigan. It’s well worth opening the large version. The actual image is about 9200 pixels across.
