There was a cave rescue training due. The first one in a long time! And I normally bring a camera. I tend to have a special camera dedicated to underground use. I had had a Lumix for years, which had taken serious battering, and I retired that when the lens had become so scratched the autofocus didn't work anymore. It also had other technological problems. Before that, I had at some point realised the front panel was coming off, which evidently meant it wasn't waterproof anymore. After I dried it out, I made brass brackets that pushed the front and back panel together again. It worked for years after I did that! And since its retirement I had just kept it as a sort of a souvenir.
Not long before the pandemic hit, I had noticed that the same issue was starting to show on the Lumix that was the replacement of my original underground camera. It looks like this is a weak spot of this model! But it was easy to see what the solution would be; I could just use one or more of the brackets of the original camera and place it on this one. It's the same model; it should fit! So when it was clear I was going to go underground again, I had a look at the situation. I got the brackets off the old camera. I could tell the tiny little nuts and bolts had seized up a little bit! But I got everything off. Then of course the job was to get a bracket on the newer camera. I went for the easy route, and used the nuts and bolts that were the least seized up! So it was fairly easy to put them on the new camera. Not entirely easy; the whole setup relies on tens of millimetres, so it is all a bit tight. But I got it done!
Did that mean my camera went underground? Nope; as it had been out of action for a long time, the battery was flat, and I didn't put it in the charger on time. But we have another training next month, and then the revamped camera can make its debut.
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| The two cameras before the swap |
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| That gap shouldn't be there! |
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| Camera ready for action again! After the battery is charged… |
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