While I was in the water with my kids yesterday at the beach, a pack of seagulls descended on our pile of gear in search of food. To bring my camera to the beach, I had taken the foam camera bag insert from my handbag, in which it usually resides, and placed it inside a plastic grocery bag, tied shut, to keep the sand and water out. I placed that whole mess inside our beach bag, safely nestled among the towels, etc. There was no food in that bag. But that didn't stop those winged varmints from looking! I think they have learned that plastic grocery bags usually contain food (last week, I saw a gull fly off with a bag of snacks from a family's stash), so when they found the one with my camera, they pulled it out, dragged it across the sand, and opened it, unceremoniously dumping out the contents. Imagine my horror upon finding the business end of my lens half-submerged in sand, surrounded by hundreds of webbed foot prints!
I did my best to carefully brush off the sand. It was everywhere. The on/off switch was "sticky" at first, but that seems to have worked itself out. Does the AF sound noisier than before? Am I imagining that the shutter sounds clankier? Argh!! So here's my question: now what do I do? Is it possible that tiny grains of sand could get in there & gunk up the works? My camera - the k7 - is "weatherproof". The lens - a sigma 17-70 -- makes no such claim. I've removed the sd card, carefully inspecting and removing with a brush any grains of sand around the door. I figure I should do the same with the lens... but are there other steps I should be taking? OTOH, everything seems to be working, I had a UV filter on my lens... and luckily - I'm guessing those gulls shoot Nikon. :) -c -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
