[kmurphy220]

Thanks. I have seen a K30 for 175 GBP, with under 8000 shutters. I think it's a great price. I wonder does anyone have experience with this camera? Would it live up to the K-5 I am used to? I don't see much difference between it and the K-S2, apart from the flip out screen.

The K30 is a solid camera and under 8000 shutters is good but you should know that they are known to have aperture lever problems that need the mirror box to be replaced. But if you are granted a warranty or you know that the repair has happened already, The K30 is a very awesome camera to use. Its quick, easy to figure out, and solidly built.

[totsmuyco]

What you did is really an abuse. No offense but, besides drowning it, you roasted it.

Should you have decided to do this to your camera earlier before buying, you should've thought of the D3.

[disasterfilm]

My K-5iis took a nosedive into a lake recently, and here's the cliff-notes on what I learned for how I should have aided its recovery.

The first step is universally agreed - don't turn it on and take your battery and SD cards out. and anything else that can be removed. Next, open up all the panels and compartments.

Now go get your vacuum cleaner. Not joking. Use the hose attachment, and manipulate your thumb and index finger to form a seal around the suction end of the hose. Start sucking all around your camera, wherever panel seams are, or joints, or openings, the battery compartment, or mic inputs, basically anywhere water can get in and where water is likely to stay trapped. For non-GR cameras, you can also do this with a detachable lens.

Suck that thing dry. It works - I watched fog and condensation disappear in minutes from places that wouldn't clear after 5 days in a desiccant. Take your time though, and be mindful of your vacuum motor... don't burn that thing out too with the massive suction demand you'll be putting on it.

Next, it's time for desiccant isolation. The pile of rice just isn't good enough to remove the moisture in something as big as a camera. It doesn't create enough suction and doesn't have the internal moisture storage enough to really remove the amount of water that can be left inside a camera. Phone? TV remote? Car keyfob? Sure. But don't leave your camera to chance.

I recommend silica packets like the ones you get in clothes, packages, etc. Cram them in your battery compartment, in your lens cavity if it can be removed, or anywhere else that puts it in closer contact to trapped moisture inside the camera. Seal that all up in a ziplock bag.

If you don't have a ton of those packets just lying around, go to Michaels or Hobby Lobby, go to the flower section, and find the Activa Flower Drying Art Silica Gel that's in the flower-drying section. Don't dump it around your camera... but get a large Ziplock bag, pour the gel in a small bowl, and place the camera directly over it but not in it. Seal the bag and wait.

But wait - I had more ideas. If you have the silica packets and don't have to worry about knocking your camera into the flower-drying stuff, do this too - If you have an electronic heating pad, put the ziplock bag with the camera and gel packets in an ice chest and wrap the heating pad around the bagged camera. This really helps increase the moisture's energy state, which in turn helps it evaporate (and get trapped inside the desiccant) far, far easier. Then close the ice chest to keep the heat inside.

For safety reasons, I would only activate the heating pad when I was sitting right next to the ice chest, and alternate periods between having the pad on or off.

Then it's just a matter of waiting... and maybe changing out the silica packets for new ones after the first day orso.

While developing this method, I tried a lot of stuff that did my camera a lot of harm. Even without using a well-planned procedure, and doing some dumb things like turning my camera on when it was soaking wet, figuring out these steps actually led to my K-5iis being able to be powered on (but not fully working, which I attribute to my trail & error failures).

So there's hope.

[plooksta]

What you did is really an abuse. No offense but, besides drowning it, you roasted it.

Should you have decided to do this to your camera earlier before buying, you should've thought of the D3.

Huh? ~The D3 can take this?

[Wild Mark]

Huh? ~The D3 can take this?

No but abuse is warranted for this device

[pathdoc]

No but abuse is warranted for this device

LOL that's what I thought you meant.

Can we also test its resistance to shotgun blasts and hungry sharks? Sure, this gets costly after a while, but there must be heaps of oil sheikhs with more money than God and plenty of time on their hands who wouldn't mind running the tests for us...

[totsmuyco]

Huh? ~The D3 can take this?

I've seen a guy in YouTube who abused his D3. He took a shower with it, mounted his camera on a tripod and push it to the mud, placed his camera inside a bag and moved his car causing camera bag to fall unto the concrete and of course he didn't run over it. He froze his camera and the last test was he sprayed it with lighter fluid and lit it. The D3 survived all his tests. Of course if i owned one i wouldn't do that. With what he showed I believe the D3 can tolerate a heavier beating than the K-5. But yet, I don't like to own a D3 and have no plans in getting one. I'm happy with my K-5II and K-3II. I also don't plan to abuse my cameras.

[djb47]

At what point does the known aperture lever problem occur in the K30?

[tim60]

I don't think putting them in the oven is a very good idea.
Best is to open all ports and leave the body by a sunny window. Leave it for about a week or more before trying to power up the camera.
I've had laptops in for repair that have had glasses of water spilled over the keyboard and gone through the entire machine. Granted I have to disassemble them to dry them out, but after a week they generally always fire up just fine.
But yeh, if it was salt water - different story.

Many years ago there was a story in IEEE Spectrum about water/flood recovery of electrical equipment.

The general thing for dirty water, such as sea or flood is to add more, clean water, deionised is best, to wash off all the salts and dirt. Then possibly a quick dip in alcohol to enable faster evaporation, less time for corrosion. Then keeping in a dry and not too cold environment, such as a room heated to comfortable.

About 35 years ago I saw this method used for real after a coal mine flood on big motors that operate at 6.6kV.

[kmurphy220]

At what point does the known aperture lever problem occur in the K30?

Mine Happened at about 9,000 shutters in and around their

[djb47]

Thanks kmurphy220. I've got some 8500 clicks to go on mine if I'm lucky.

[kmurphy220]

Thanks kmurphy220. I've got some 8500 clicks to go on mine if I'm lucky.

You should be okay. One thing I learned is to not use lenses that have sticky apertures that seemed to screw up some stuff on my K30 and then I was using burst fire almost constantly even when it wasn't needed. Plus It was used and when I reformatted the card I started at 1. So for all I know it could of had more shutter actuations on it. But I will say that if your lucky the K30 is an awesome little DSLR and is great overall.

[totsmuyco]

I'm not familiar with the K-30. Buy what happens with the aperture level problem?

[kmurphy220]

Its kind of weird. I was shooting out the car window and the shutter made a noise and fired and then it fired again and though this time half the VF went black. Then it fired again and then the whole VF went black. Then the fun really started when the camera turned into a nice brick for about an hour or so. So I popped the battery, and SD card out and let it sit at home. That day was almost 100 degrees so we all thought it was the heat that screwed it up so I had it close but not to close to the air vent when I got home. then I started reading about the K30 having issues and I found pictures of what the inside was supposed to look like. I poked around a little bit inside and found that the aperture lever little piece that moves a gear that moves the lever popped out and the mirror box went with it. So it was quite the fun little adventure. But now I have the K-5 and it is my little tank with already 8,000 actuations in two months

[mythguy9]

Loss a camera to the sea too. RIP.