Equipment

This is Your (Well Our) Camera at Burning Man

Published September 15, 2016
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In the repair department, there are things we hate. Salt water for cameras and lenses, salt water and sand for tripods and lenses. Sand in legs of the zoom mechanism of lenses ruins threads, they’ll never be smooth again.

Right behind those two is dust. Dust doesn’t always destroy equipment, but dust in equipment ruins pictures and can ruin circuit boards. So we hate Burning Man. The fine alkali dust that gets in everything at Burning Man isn’t as bad as sand and salt water – but it’s up there. Every year we tell people to take cheap or disposable equipment to Burning Man. It’s probably going to be ruined, and you aren’t going to like the charges. And every year people say, “It’s just dust.”

Side note for future renters. If you don’t want to take your own equipment into an area where you know it will be ruined, don’t rent our equipment and assume the Lenscap policy will cover you. It does not cover gross negligence, reckless, or intentional damage. Lenscap is designed as coverage for any accidents you may encounter, not as a way to avoid having to take common sense precautions when using our equipment in inhospitable conditions.

Since we’ve been doing a lot of Burning Man cleanup, we thought we’d share what a typical item goes through. Maybe some of you will pick up some cleaning pointers. Others may get some logical respect for dust. And some others will enjoy a peak inside the Nikon D810 that is the subject of this little post. I’ll warn you on the front end: this isn’t a teardown with great pictures. These are quick captures while we were working so there may be some motion blur and bad lighting.

So here’s a couple of views of our weary traveler as we received it.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

Lensrentals.com, 2016

The viewfinder cups are removed. There was a lot of dust under them and while you can’t tell here, inside the viewfinder. Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

Lensrentals.com, 2016

This is a poor shot, but the flash is open here, showing how much dust got into the flash tray. Lensrentals.com, 2016

Before we did anything else, particularly opening the port covers, we spent 15 minutes blowing and brushing the easily removed dust off.  Pardon the blur, but it gives you a general idea of what’s left.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

It’s not looking great yet; that’s for sure. But we felt like we could open the ports and look at the connections. There’s still lots of caked on dust, but it’s not loose enough to fall into things. We could have used some wet cloths and things at this point and gotten off some more dust, but we didn’t want to add moisture to the equation yet.
I’m not saying that’s not an entirely acceptable option, but our primary goal at this point will be getting dust out of the inside and for that we wanted things as dry as possible.

The battery compartment, memory card slots, and the area around all the I/O ports had plenty of dust inside, so we knew further disassembly would be required.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

We have kind of a love-hate relationship with disassembling Nikon cameras. The good part is they are very logically laid out and assembled, with each panel coming off by itself which makes disassembly a joy. The bad part is Nikon has a policy of using as many different sized screws as is humanly possible, making it necessary to keep incredibly organized.

For example, there are nine screws of 5 different sizes holding on the bottom plate. This may be because they’ve carefully engineered the best possible screw at each location to provide the most strength. It may just be because they hate us. I’ll never know.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

As each panel was removed, we saw the same thing; the rubber weather resistant seals stopped the majority of the dust. In most of the pictures below you can see beige areas along the rubber seals that are caked dust. Beyond the seals, inside the camera, there are loose dust particles that got through, but the vast majority was kept out.

Overall, I’m impressed with how much dust did NOT get inside the camera. But there was still way more inside than was acceptable. One thing I should note is around every port and opening there was more dust close, and less dust further away from the opening. If there had been relatively even distribution, we might consider that it all came in through the mirror box or viewfinder or something. But I’m comfortable some dust got in from every possible access.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

inviewfinder

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

It doesn’t show well in pictures of this size, but while there was a little dust on the PCBs underneath all those covers, it wasn’t an enormous amount. We blew it off, of course, but it wasn’t bad. Each of the plates and seals that we removed were cleaned inside and out after removal.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Here are a couple of crops from the main PCB and internal back cover to give you an idea of what I describe as ‘light dust’ inside. It’s more than acceptable but probably wouldn’t cause any damage.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

I haven’t mentioned it, but all of the rubber grip material was removed, too. There was no way to try to clean it well in place. At this point were pretty happy with what we’d seen. There was a lot of dust in the viewfinder assembly, but not too much had gotten into the rest of the camera. We were expecting worse, though. When you see this kind of dust under the lens cap…

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

…and in the mirror box, you figure the front of the camera is going to be worse than the back.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

That makes sense since it’s the most exposed. It’s also the bigger problem since it’s in the optical path. On to the quick picture, just to thank Nikon for the ease with which the front and top cover assemblies come off in their cameras.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

The front assembly itself and the lower (base plate side) of the front of the camera weren’t horribly dusty, although worse than the back.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

But the area above the lens mount and under the flash was badly caked with dust. This isn’t surprising since this area is open to the viewfinder, the lens mount, and the flash assembly, so there’re lots of ways for the dust to get in.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

This is especially a problem because there are lots of mechanicals in here that don’t like dust: springs, mirror, and shutter motor gears, etc.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

When we took the top off, the same thing was apparent. Lots of dust got in the top center area and seemed thickest in the parts we didn’t want it in: motors, gears, the optical prism, and electro-mechanical dials and switches.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

One thing we did notice at the top; there wasn’t a lot of dust right around the rubber seals, and the distribution was more even, which makes me think most of this came in from the front panel and around the viewfinder assembly rather than directly through the top seals.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

And Then…

Well, I won’t bore you with 762 eight-by-ten color glossies of what we did there at the Group B bench. But there was much Rocket blowing, many Q-tips were sacrificed, the sensor, AF sensor, and mirror box were wet-and-dry-and-wet-and-dry cleaned. Toothpicks cleaned gears and springs. And much time (about 2 hours) passed. After which everything inside looked shiny clean and new.

Here’s the camera reassembled, but still missing the rubber grips which are more difficult to clean than the insides.

Lensrentals.com, 2016

Lensrentals.com, 2016

 

To give you an idea of how difficult, here’re two pieces as they sit currently. Both have been washed with soap and water. The larger part has also had a vinegar-water wash (that works with alkali dust) and toothbrush scrubbing. We’ll try one a few more things but at this point, I think we may lose this part of the battle and have to replace the rubber. But the camera itself is working fine.

Because someone will ask what we do know, the camera will go into service as a testing camera here for at least a few weeks (probably 8,000 shots) to let any remaining dust work its way into the mirror box and/or viewfinder and get cleaned again.

So now you see part of the reason why I’m so cynical when people tell me their camera was caked with dust and dirt but they cleaned it off, and it’s fine. The outside of this camera could have been cleaned (well, maybe not the rubber grips). But it wouldn’t have for all that long – those dust encased springs, gears, and switches would have started misfunctioning sooner rather than later.

Protect your gear, my friends. Plastic bags, rubber bands, and tape are your friends. Dust, water, and sand are your enemies.

 

Roger Cicala and Aaron Closz

Lensrentals.com

September, 2016

 

 

Author: Roger Cicala

I’m Roger and I am the founder of Lensrentals.com. Hailed as one of the optic nerds here, I enjoy shooting collimated light through 30X microscope objectives in my spare time. When I do take real pictures I like using something different: a Medium format, or Pentax K1, or a Sony RX1R.

Posted in Equipment
  • Peter Kelly

    You have my intense admiration!

    To be faced with such criminal neglect must take enormous restraint (I’d have been finding out if the camera body could still withstand an impact against his skull…).

    More significant, you have such patience and dedication as I would have immediately regarded this as a write off and dropped it into the nearest bin. To resurrect it is spectacular!

  • Jochen Römling

    I truly hope that those two hours of painful repairwork were invoiced to the customer at premium rate!

  • Carl Eberhart

    Very impressed with the cleaning effort, Roger and Aaron! I had no idea this camera was from Lensrentals, but I should have guessed, lol ! I just hope I don’t wind up with this particular camera. I am wanting to rent a D810 (my first D810 rental ever) about a month from now.

  • John Driscoll

    Is that rust?

  • Frank Schiffel

    Nice, are certain bodies more survivable than others? Say the top end that say they and lenses are sealed?Good repair write up though.

  • the_ownage

    you guys should ban people like that from renting.

  • James Vincent Paquette

    You think that’s bad, you should see the case of chlamydia he brought back from burning man!

  • Luke Szczepanski

    Photographed Burning Man for 6 years straight. Never had a camera body fail on me. But it never looked like this after the event – I do care about my gear – I don’t shoot in dust storms and the camera goes back into the backpack when not in use.

    It’s sad to see when someone trashes gear like this – I sure hope they paid $$$ for the clean up.

  • Kampy

    I have 2 Nikon bodies that have survived 6 Burning Mans. If you use basic common sense (keep them stored away in a case/bag when not in use, and don’t have it out during a dust storm) it’s no problem. Clearly, the person who rented that D810 didn’t use common sense

  • VSG

    Ouch, I can only imagine Roger throwing a fit and dancing his anger out.

  • LAB 2.35:1

    What a turd this customer is. My hat’s off to you and your team, Roger.

    On a side note… 15+ years ago, one of my teams responsible for Verizon Pager devision, had to recondition about 100 pagers for a hospital when there was a shortage from a supplier. One genius kid disassembled all the pagers and… wait for it… BOILED (!!!) the plastic cases and some of the rubber seals and buttons! Pagers looked new when they put them back together. Where there’s a will there’s a way… but I’m surprised you guys haven’t written this one off as a loss and charged the douchebag accordingly.

  • James

    no lens?

  • Jim_Feeley

    Haven’t been to burning man, but in other dusty environments (that –might– be comparable to the northern Nevada playa), we used an ewa-marine water bag/housing with success.

    There’s also this method. https://youtu.be/lrdkFXsr5Us?t=27s

  • John Dillworth

    Roger, Love your company and you are a nice guy. Your run a nice business and charge a fair price. I suspect, regretfully, you choose not to do repeat business with some folks. Hopefully this renter is one of them. I fail to understand how a human could return this thing and just assume you would clean up their mess. I’ve worked most of my life in customer service related businesses of one form or another. My experience has been 99% of people are nice and the other 1% you can’t do anything about, it not your fault. Glad you can make a teaching point of this. I am infuriated

  • alistair

    An underwater housing would probably help but they’re pretty heavy and at their weakest in shallow water (there’s less pressure holding it closed).

    I reckon you want an expensive aluminium one (e.g. Nauticam) with a leak detector that relies on the case being slightly lower pressure than ambient outside rather than a cheaper perspex one (e.g. Ikelite).

    Of course temperature changes would play havoc too. So maybe one of those plastic bag things from Ewa-Marine would be best.

  • Pod

    A friend of mine came back from there, and he basically said that if I ever am to go (not likely – I’m definitely not in the demographic…) to take photos of the (spectacular) desert scenery, I should bring a camera I am willing to sacrifice.

  • AGreed!!!

  • When I was in Vietnam in 69 our photo-lab was located in an area where there was a very, very fine soil. It got into everything, including the water. No filters in 1969 could get all of this dirt out of the water. Result was very fine dirt embedded in our color film. With b&w we could wipe it off before drying but with color you can’t do any wiping.

    My own Nikon F and lenses had this brown soil on it for years after coming home. I think I can still find the stuff on my 28mm lens.

  • Mike Carnevale

    That is soooo sad, I would love that camera!

  • tim jones

    Douche Man

  • christopherboffoli

    Seems to me as though a watertight housing would be the best way to go.

  • Jim A.

    In the future, you might try a good shop vac with the soft brush attachment on the end as a first step, it will get quite a lot of the loose stuff off, and if you have the right filter inside the vacuum (HEPA), the dust will stay where it belongs. I have never personally put it to the test like your customer forced you guys to, but it sure cleans the dash and radio in my truck a lot better than anything else. Compressed air just redistributes the dust, and you have to deal with it everywhere else. Better to suck it up and get it out of the area. It’s never going to get THAT camera clean, but it’ll get you part way. I have to add, that particular renter would go on my “blacklist”. Hell, I’d charge $300.00 just as punishment, before I added parts and labor.

  • Tim Cooper

    Not that I want to do it, but I’m curious if you rent a protective setup that would be sufficient for Burning Man, or if not what you would recommend.

  • Kai Little

    How much was the charge for this cleaning/repair?

  • Drew Cicala

    We do charge the customers, obviously. But we definitely don’t want the same person who decided to return it in this condition trying to clean it themselves, so we accept the return and try and fix things as best we can.

  • Intermodális Csomópont

    …and there is a cheap, refurbished D810.

  • tjholowaychuk

    Wow you let people return in this condition? I would be like fuckkk no

  • p.rock

    I felt my rage rising just by reading the title, so I was glad to get to your third paragraph. Always appreciate seeing a company stand up for itself when bad people try to take advantage of it.

  • Halfrack

    I wonder how the AW1’s held up. At least you would dunk the whole thing multiple times (and never change the lens).

  • Renting gear for the sole purpose to destroying it at a festival is some next level irresponsibility.

    Glad to see this Nikon was able to survive.

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