Hi guys,

portable as it is, I tend to bring my GF1 around all day long... stretching into the evening 'cause I'm quite interested in documenting night life. But this has its risks and unfortunately an incident happened some 10 days ago: a friend of mine spilt beer on my GF1.
I immediately took apart what could be put apart by hand (lens, EVF, battery, SD card) and sponged what I could with a napkin... and then it seemed to be ok and I didn't take any further steps... but the beer did do some damage which has become obvious a few days after:
- slight oxidation of the mount - visible dark traces and very noticeable friction when mounting or unmounting a lens
- oxidation of the upper dials (shoot mode and drive mode) which has become hard to operate
- squeaky operation of the EVF articulation and integrated flash.

Briefly said, a mild curse of oxidation and stickiness has struck the moveable parts of the camera, which I just bought two months ago...

I'm about to buy isopropyl alcohol and basically bathe the whole GF1 in it in order to remove all the sticky beer residues. 'cause of course it's not possible to take the GF1 apart and access the dials (my biggest concern). However I guess that won't be much helpful against the oxidation.

Can you advice on this? Any former experience and solution for this kind of incident?
(please, as funny as the topic of beer on camera seems to be according to some similar threads on the net, let's keep this reasonably useful and matter-of-factly ;) )

my heart aches for you ... i soaked my E-P2 in soya milk ... it took a bit of doing (thanks Mr. Mosely) but Olympus repaired for a price ... beer is full of sugar and acid and there's every possibility of long-term internal damage that won;t show up for a while is my guess ... good luck!

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My photostream at Flickr.com is here

"To think like someone else, you have to remember that they don't think they're wrong"

Thanks for the support :)

Well yeah I guess I need to bathe it completely in some kind of mild solvent then.

I think I'll go for professional servicing first thing tomorrow after work...

We had a camcorder in similar situation. Sent to manufacturer for service. Cost was reasonable, even though it was well out of warranty. Recommend you start there.

This is exactly what you must not do, if you do not want to destroy your camera completely! Just send it to the manufacturer for service and hope that the camera can be repaired.

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“It doesn’t matter what you look at, but what you see.” (Henry David Thoreau)

Greg, so sorry to read this. Good luck with the repairs. I hope that it will not be too costly and that you'll get the camera back soon. Please keep us posted. I feel for you - the way I felt for our friend pdh when his camera got soy soaked.

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**An evolving camera owner.

~ BB
Flickr photostream

I would suggest switching to wine from now on

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Brett
E-P2 | 14-42 M.Zuiko | 50/2 Summicron | 90/2 Summicron

my crap on flickr

I was "also" out of luck.
- The sister of my wife had our LX3 swim in the ocean
- But they forgot to get the leather casing off

Result:
- The camera effectively only had a couple of droplets on it
- I took the battery out and had it dry for half a day
- It still works (cleaned lens with clean water and soft cloth) and don't have to buy a new camera yet...

Super small camera's are dangereous, I am probably going for Pentax K-r to extend my hobby (and keep the LX3 for swimming...).

For the carpet beer is better, for camera indeed wine is probably better, what is best for you, fresh orange juice?

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Joep

PS: Try to catch a laugh every day

I would recommend drinking very strong vodka. It has no extra sugars or anything and a lot less water than in beer ;D

I hope it works out for you. I have had quite a good luck in drenching accidents, and have not had any permanent damage to various electronics. But the plenty of scares have teached me to be more careful.