Flooded MZ-6: advice needed

hello dear board,
being MZ-6 user for a 7 years I have faced a first trouble. My MZ-6 with lenses SMC-FA-28-80 was flooded in the river completely.

After several days of drying ,yesterday I have cleaned outer glasses of lens and tested in on my MZ-S. Mechanically it seems to work OK. But on the inner glasses of lens I still can see the spots after the water has dried.

Might be you could advice me if it is wise at home conditions to disassemble this lens that I could clean the glasses or better let it do by professional repairman?
If that could be done by ourselves, might be there is an instruction of such procedure?

Regarding the body itself- what safety steps I should take? The batteries were taken off immediately I took it out of the water, the switch was off at the moment of "scuba diving" .
Now it has been drying for several days and seem no humidity left.
Could I try it loading with battery or should it be cleaned anyway before (by professional)?

Would like to hear any experience those who were unlucky to flood it's camera with lens.

I've seen two or three cameras that were flooded...

None of them could be recovered
The water damage eats into the electronics and renders it useless. And heaven only knows what it did to the mechanical leaf shutter.

Even if it could be repaired, you'll find it cheaper to source another camera. In the UK, places like www.mxv.co.uk, www.lcegroup.co.uk, and www.ffordes.co.uk often have film bodies and lenses.

You never know... there may be someone here that has one.

Or... it might be a great time to go digital - especially with the price of the K100D series being so crazily cheap! www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk have it for under £300. They also have Pentax refurbished *ist-DL and *ist-DS cameras - might be worth giving them a call.

Sorry for the bad news!
Matt

The camera and lens are probably past economical repair. A MZ6 with standard kit lens appear quite often on EBay and usually sell for between £40 and £50.
Professional repair if possible is probably 3 times that.

If you sold the camera and lens on EBay as faulty for spares or repair , you might get up to £20, if the right people are online.

Alternatively if you are feeling brave and you probably don't have too much to lose, you could have a go at cleaning the lens, you will need a good set of lens tools try www.micro-tools.com for these, a clear work area, good light and a steady hand. These lens contain several small springs and ball bearings that are easily lost, so extreme care is needed.

hello
thanks to Matt and Steve for the reply.
Probably Steve is quite right - now is the moment to think about turning into digital! However I have obtained MZ-S just half a year ago and still feel addicted to film
On the other hand after submerging my MZ-6 into the water and of course loosing all pictures taken on the film, I have discovered for myself that if that would be a digital camera almost it won't be any problem to get pictures from the dried memory card! I have read experience of several digital owners who had not problem to get pictures from memory card being once flooded.
That is a very big pron towards digital!
Nevertheless as I've mentioned still love my MZ-S and a film.

In the following days will try to load battery into MZ-6 and see how it reacts. Will let you know.

Good grief. How often do you take your camera for a swim? In 50 years of owning a camera I've dropped a couple but I've never immersed one. The ability to recover pictures from a sunken camera has never seemed to me to be an important selling point.

G

hello,
that is all about paddling,nevertheless it is only a twice or so per year.
Having at least pictures from a sunken camera is not the worse case as it happens with film camera, where neither camera works any more, nor pictures.
IMHO that is a pron for digital.

Actually film can be processed quite easily after it has become wet. After all, you dunk it in liquids to process it.

Any camera that has been immersed in water is dead, for ever. Especially one that has been allowed to dry for several days.

The correct technique is to leave the camera in a bucket of water and take it immediately to a repair house to be dismantled, dried, relubricated and reassembled. After which a mechanical camera might be OK, but an electronic one probably won't.

For complete destruction, cameras immersed in salt water are even less likely to survive...

If you are still considering replacing the MZ6 there is one listed on EBay at the moment, £40 starting price, no bids and 24 hours to go (I have no connection with this item or seller)

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ih=006&sspagename=STRK%3...

hello Steve,
thanks for the link.
I am not intending to replace mine MZ-6 with another one. I do have MZ-S and that is more than enough for me now.
The only what I was looking - to know if there is any chance to get to the life flooded MZ-6. If not , I stay with MZ-S and see what a future will bring.

Now I am looking for a zoom that could cover a range like 14-70 or similar. The flooded lens 28-80 was the widest one I could use on my Pentax body.
Need a replacement.

The 20-35mm and 24-90mm Pentax lenses could suit very well.

The 24-90 and 20-35 are both available from Amazon, £349 and £392 repectively.
The 28- 80 is regularly found on EBay
see link http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SMC-PENTAX-FA-28-80mm-F-3-5-5-6-ZOOM-LENS-PENTAX-KAF_W0QQi...