Interlude: The Demise of the GoPro Camera

I forgot to mention the demise of the GoPro camera in the Warroora post. Many of you will have seen or heard of GoPro cameras. They are a very small camera, cable of shooting still photographs, movies and so on. They come with various housings and mounts for various uses of the camera. This is where I came unstuck.

I had gotten into the habit of taking my GoPro camera on fishing trips, to record unusual or very large fish captures. I have been doing this for several months, storing the camera in my fishing bag or bucket, inside an old sock to prevent the lens from getting soiled and scratched. I had purchased an attachable back for the camera, which enabled me to view the subject matter before and during shooting. This video backpack came with its own selection of cases to protect the camera.

Most of the cases are degrees of being absolutely waterproof to 60 Metres deep, to having and opening in them to let the sound get to the microphone easier. When I installed my video backpack I thought that I had installed the waterproof back......

As described in the post about Warra, we got a lot of rain. The GoPro was in the fishing bucket and the fishing bucket was out in the rain. Let's face it, there was nothing in the bucket that water was going to bother, right? Wrong! Even with my glasses on, I had failed to notice that I had installed one of the cases with some small holes in it (to let more sound in.) Even though I had taken the camera out of that case many times, to either recharge the battery or download the shots from the memory card, I had failed to see the holes in that cover.

Next day, the camera was swimming around in the bucket and I took it out of the old sock to dry it and use it. Can you imagine how I felt when I saw water dripping out of the "waterproof" case, not to mention being able to see water inside the case sloshing around? I was devastated. I was a career electronics person and I knew, without so much as testing the camera, that it would be stuffed. Sure enough, closer examination revealed green stuff growing where green stuff didn't oughta be.

Surprisingly, the memory card survived and I was able to download the two clips that were on it. That was the only good news though. Naturally, I have replaced the camera and, naturally, a great many of extras and accessories from the old camera are not compatible with the new one. Even the memory cards are different. I will be using a microscope when I fit covers to the new camera.