On a recent trout fishing trip to a very damp and rainswept Pitsford Water my Canon Olympus PowerShot A510 Camera managed to perform a quadruple backflip directly out of my pocket into over four feet of Pitsfords murky water. Honest Guv! I have no idea how it managed to perform this stunning acrobatic feat of its own accord :)

After scraping around the bottom for nigh on twenty minutes with my landing net at full stretch I managed to retrieve a very sodden and mud encased mass. Since it only had a few images on the 2Gb SD Memory card and combined with the actual age of the camera itself I had already written it all off as "just one of those things" and fully expected to be looking towards purchasing a replacement.

So with this is mind I thought it was at least worth a try at salvaging the camera on the off chance it might be retrievable - nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. To dry the camera out took a week of variously storing the device in an airing cupboard, placing it on a sun filled windowsill and on a shelf directly above a living room fire with the batteries and SD card removed. After this period the condensation finally cleared from the internal glass parts.

Putting it all back together I fully expected it to be completely dead. I was really surprised to find that it actually did work! Some of the mechanical parts needed a little help such as the shutter to open up fully. Setting the internal clock did not hold on a restart and needs to be entered every time the device is switched on but this is trivial, even the images as seen on this website in the Pitsford gallery are confirmation that they were still available.

What a result!

I reckon Canon should be giving me a free replacement camera for this real world confirmation of the durability of their wares :)