Topic: panasonic ag-dvx100b vs gin & tonic

[evasivetear]

sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but this looked to be the place to post it....

so yeh...taping a show last night, a buddy of mine was helping me film, and someone in the crowd spilled their drink (which we learned was gin & tonic) on the camera.

surprisingly, the camera mostly worked for the whole show....i checked the tape on another camera, and it seemed to have recorded fine....however, the spilling got all over the control panel / lcd screen....so, i aired it out and tried it this morning....LCD screen is shot, speakers to the camera seem to be shot...no idea about any of the other functions as I had to get to work...

my warranty on it is up....does anyone here have any idea on how much it might cost to fix this, or am i basically screwed and need to buy a new camera?


thanks

[John Kary]

Would need to be looked at by an authorized Panasonic repair shop to really assess the damage.  You might get away with a new LCD and speaker, but if it got to the main circuit board you might be screwed.  Hope it stayed away from the lens and focus/zoom rings, else those are up around the $1000 range from what I've heard.  LCD and speaker you're probably still looking at $500-1000.

Cam is still usable w/o the LCD, so not all is lost.  Might have to reserve it as a stationary cam or on a tripod doing stage shots.

[wilsonedits]

that sucks... I actually broke the entire lense of my dvx a year ago... I had to send it in to panasonic and it wasnt under warranty (wouldn't have mattered if it was)

Its 250 just to have your camera looked at.... my final bill was 848 to reattached the lense and fix zoom controls and stuff

[gearscout]

The liquid may have created a short circuit on one of the circuit boards...burning out components.  The Panasonic service would likely replace the whole board rather than the affected components and it sounds like that would include the control panel.  Brace yourself.

From my experience with Panasonic's authorized repair service, it will be expensive to send it to them, but what's the choice? 

I used them once.  It was a place in Illinois...a factory recall on a white balance issue with the PV-DV953.  When it came back, the auto white balance worked but you could no longer do a manual white balance.  That sucked and I'm still correcting color in Final Cut Pro almost every time I shoot.  When I asked them to perform additional maintenance and offered to pay for it, they ignored me and just sent back the camera (without the memory card I had mistakenly left in the camera.)  Not the friendliest customer service I've ever had, for sure.  But they were probably being paid much less than usual because it was a warranty issue.

This is an expensive camera and you may decide it's worth sending it off to attempt a repair. 

Good Luck and let us know how you fared!

[BayTaynt3d]

In general, if something gets wet, I'd shut that shit off ASAP and let it dry for days before attempting to turn it back on. If it shorted, it's probably too late, but in general, you should pull the plug if it was as bad as it sounds like it was (major wetness).

[evasivetear]

yeh...in retro spect, i should have done that....

but, it's all taken care of now....cost $400 to fix at a local camera repair shop, and everything works perfectly again.