GoPro Hero 3 Flooded

[WaterSnorklerDiver]

I recently bought a new GoPro Hero 3 prior to a dive trip. I made 4 successful dives to 60 feet and snorkeled with it many times. On one dive above 70 feet (all my dives were above 70 feet), alas, the Hero 3 came out of the water all wet - inside the housing and out! Fully flooded.

Based on the review at
Scuba Diver Info - GoPro Hero3
the specs indicate that the housing has a Max depth of 200 feet. So how and why then did the housing get flooded? (And not just a little, the inside was filled with salt water.)

It might be "rated" to 200 feet - but this would be in ideal laboratory conditions. Buyers beware. I too was hoping "this is not going to happen to me". But it did.
I have yet to figure out what went wrong. After every dive, I open the case, make sure there is no sand or grit; keep the O-ring clean. And when I get ready for a dive, the battery is fully charged and the housing is nicely closed and well snapped into place.

I can only suggest that there might be engineering or design issues with the Hero 3 housing. It can and does get flooded. For scuba divers, GoPro may be over-promising and under-delivering.

GoPro flooding while scuba diving does happen. And the scuba divers I know take great care of their equipment. So I don't understand how this happened...

Has anyone dealt with GoPro warrantee?

What to do when things go wrong:
Immediately remove the battery (!) and rinse the camera (with regret) with fresh water. Remove the memory card and dry out in tissue paper. Hopefully, you'll be able to recover any good footage you already have. Additionally, you could soak the camera in distilled water (available at a pharmacy). Dry the camera completely. To do this, place the camera in a plastic bag with moisture absorbing salt pellets (available from dive stores) or with white rice. Dry out the camera completely - this might take a few days (not hours). You will need a new battery. However, the camera inner electronics are now permanently corroded. Don't expect the same lifetime... If water went into the lens area, you won't be able to clean and polish it.

 

[toddthecat]

Sounds like a compromised o-ring. If it failed due to pressure you'd have visual evidence of that. I still dive with a 960 and have taken it frequently to recreational depth limits. It has never even leaked a little let alone flooded. I have only ever had one customer return a GoPro and that was due to some sort of hardware issue causing it to turn off and the update didn't work. They promptly replaced it. For a full flood like that I wouldn't hold my breath (no pun intended) on getting a replacement, especially if there is no indication of some sort of failure in manufacturing.

 

[fishstix]

When you stored the camera did you have the housing fully closed? Storing that way may compress the O-ring and compromise it's ability to create a good waterproof seal.

 

[jchance]

Just returned from a week in Cozumel and made daily dives in excess of 120 feet. No issues here. I would look for that hair, fiber or grit that lodged on your o-ring and caused your issue; you know, operator error.

 

[kelemvor]

Has anyone dealt with GoPro warrantee?

What to do when things go wrong:
Immediately remove the battery (!) and rinse the camera (with regret) with fresh water. Remove the memory card and dry out in tissue paper. Hopefully, you'll be able to recover any good footage you already have. Additionally, you could soak the camera in distilled water (available at a pharmacy). Dry the camera completely. To do this, place the camera in a plastic bag with moisture absorbing salt pellets (available from dive stores) or with white rice. Dry out the camera completely - this might take a few days (not hours). You will need a new battery. However, the camera inner electronics are now permanently corroded. Don't expect the same lifetime... If water went into the lens area, you won't be able to clean and polish it.

I have a hero2 that flooded due to a defect in the housing near the lens port. I saved the camera by drying it out similar to what you are describing. The battery was toast. I contacted gopro via their website and they sent me a replacement housing. I never asked for a replacement battery since I had another and already pitched the bad one. Give them a call or email, they didn't give me a hard time about replacing the housing at all. Maybe you'll have as good a response on the camera.

 

[yarik83]

While it is unfortunate to have your camera flood, you have immediately jumped to conclusions that all gopro housings are bad which is not true at all. Gopro is rated to 200ft... but that does not mean that you should be taking it to 200ft. That being said let's cover most important aspect.

DID YOU CHECK THE HOUSING BEFORE THE DIVE?

If your housing is all scratched up, you dropped it a half dozen times... then of course it flooded.

DID YOU CHECK O-RING BEFORE SHUTTING THE CAMERA HOUSING?

If you casually put your camera in there and shut the housing... then of course it flooded. You HAVE to check for any defects in o-ring, for any particles on the o-ring, for any hairs on the o-ring. That applies to any camera... not just gopro.

DID YOU LEAVE YOUR CAMERA IN THE WATER BUCKET?

If you did not... then how do you know your camera housing was shut properly? That is the FIRST thing you need to do as a videographer... put camera under water and look for bubbles.

DID YOU LEAVE CAMERA DANGLING ON SOME STRING?

A lot of divers clip their gopros to their BCD and swim about. As you move... clip could have caught on to something and shifted, thus compromising the seal and flooding the camera.

I have 2 gopros... well 3... 1 is on bottom of alligator infested river if it was not eaten by alligators or swept out into the sea. I have been diving with all 3 for probably close to a year... all 3 are hero 3 black edition. My normal dives range from 45-106 feet in depth. Total number of dives is about 40? with each housing.

I use my gopros for everything so I have to be extra careful with my housings and I always check, double check and triple check to make sure that every time I close the housing... it is water tight.

 

[bumcikaz]

I have hero2 and hero3, i always take one with me when im diving, week ago i went down 133ft with no problem with hero3, took both over 100ft few times with no probles, sorry about your camera tho

 

[WaterSnorklerDiver]

I love how some people rationalize and defend poor engineering by counting the number of successes. Fact: A GoPro Hero 3 housing might, could, and do flood... sometimes. The question then becomes under which conditions. Did GoPro alpha and beta test with good reasonably smart scuba divers? I don't know. But the product does fail the "dry inside" test - in my case, on a 65 foot dive.

Was there visible hair? No. Was there visible sand? No. Was the o-ring old? No. Was the o-ring broken or bent? No. Was the o-ring clean? Yes. Was the door and housing grove clean? Yes. Did I check o-ring before shutting the camera housing? Yes. Did I check the housing before the dive? Yes. (Hey, the big snap is hard to miss.)

Am I saying that ALL GoPro housings will fail? No. Am I immediately jumping to conclusion that all GoPro housings are bad? Well... yes. With the assumption that manufacturing tolerances are so well respected these days, I am reverting my suspicions to design. Unfortunately, there is circumstantial evidence that flooding does occur... sometimes. I am not alone in this. In my personal case, I made many snorkeling dives and 6 scuba dives before the first failure. (That's worst than the space shuttle which successfully flew 25 times before the first failure. And a camera housing is much, much simpler from an engineering perspective!)

An engineering specification is a specification: if Go Pro is rated to 200ft, then, therefore - it should mean that one CAN take it to 200ft and nothing should go wrong. (That's what a spec. is.) If GoPro is going to be using a spec. in its marketing - then engineering and marketing should be in synch... Plus, a good engineering team will not let marketing publish up to the "failure point".

The suggestions in the posts above relate to diagnostics of a problem ... a pre-condition that should not exist when the product is handled properly by reasonably knowledgeable users. I believe that I and most other users to which flooding has occurred did handle the product properly. (Here, "most other users" excludes idiots and people that abuse their cameras.) Most of the time, flooding does not occur. But I'm not interested in those situations; I'm interested in keeping the camera inside the housing in perfect working order.

 

[thefeve]

No comment on quality, but I flooded mine as well. Gopro had me send the flooded unit back and have me a coupon to get a replacement at 40% off...

Sucks, but better than buying msrp again..

 

[dumpsterDiver]

Camera equipment will flood and fail.. period... Ask any serious photographer. It sucks that the housing failed. I have been lucky. I have used the Hero 1, Hero 2 and now Hero 3 for hundreds of dives. Never a problem with leakage. I have taken the camera to the rated depth (and a little past that) with zero problems, many times.

The Hero 2 camera had a major design flaw in the closure clamp, in that it could pop open at depth when compressed and then flood on ascent, but this was remedied by a rubber band (and they fixed that flaw on the Hero 3 housing). It is an awesome video camera (for the money).