Worse and impossible to replace here and now, this morning as I submerged and wanted to switch on my camcorder, it didn't respond. Through the housing's translucent back I suddenly noticed some small drops and immediately resurfaced, opening it as soon as I'd swum back to shore, releasing several cc of water... too late though, the damage already done. Sensitive electronic components + H2O = The End.
Through the dive I kept hoping that maybe I'd be able to resurrect some life into my Xacti later on, after it had had some time to dry, but alas it hasn't given a single peep ever since :o( There's no way this O-ring could have been too old. I'd cleaned & greased it prior to the dive and everything had seemed fine enough. Of course it could also have been a failure of one of the smaller, inaccessible control button O-rings? All it would take is just one little grain of sediment lodging itself where it shouldn't. As you can imagine, I'm a bit depressed loosing my camcorder so soon. Six video dives is all I got to do with it. I was only just starting to get the hang of it...
Despair not however, I still have my old Sea&Sea DX8000G, so I sure hope to do some more shooting, if not high-res photos than at least better-than-nothing low-res video-clips. The show must go on!
UPDATE: I took my empty Epoque housing for another test dive down to 5m and it remained dry... meaning it was probably the main O-ring that failed, and thus my fault? There not being any obvious reason for the leak isn't very reassuring though and my confidence got flushed.
UPDATE: Epoque's quick reply to my email informing them of my misadventure:
Dear Mr TM, Firstly we thnk you for your having purchased our EHS-1000 HD underwater housing and we are sorry that you have had trouble on this unit for flooded. We are producing our underwater housing with care and we are doing waterproof test with 100% and sufficient pressure before shipment and we are sure that there is no item we shipped with flooded. Anyhow so sorry for this. If you would have any further question please be back to us. Best regards, NN, Epoque World.
UPDATE: According to some german forum posts from an underwater photography shop in Austria, great care must be taken when placing the Sanyo Xacti HD1000 inside Epoque's housing, otherwise the housing's lid might actually not be properly closed, even though all seven clamps are shut! They've apparently had several customers coming back with flooded camcorders, and have now put an explicit warning on their website stating Epoque does not assume any responsibility what so ever no matter the cause of the flood and therefor recommend some kind of third party insurance. They also note that the first Epoque housings (pre 02/2008) for the Sanyo Xacti HD1000 require some internal pieces to be replaced (to me that reads: production error). Anyways, I actually did replace the two small rubber pieces in question inside my housing. To no avail :o(
UPDATE: There's no longer any doubt in my mind that Epoque's EHS-1000HD housing is indeed leak-prone, as more and more users are reporting similar floods. (see forum threads listed below)
→ Forum thread #228051 on ScubaBoard
→ Forum thread #24014 on Wetpixel
→ Forum thread #24410 on Wetpixel
→ German forum thread #4823 on Taucher.Net
→ German forum thread #5019 on Taucher.Net
→ Spanish forum thread #48305
UPDATE: Sanyo (Germany) of course declines any responsibility, even though they promote the EHS-1000HD as accessory on their website.
UPDATE: Interesting read in UWP #48 in which Sim Chee Ghee describes both Epoque's EHS-1000HD and Patima's Xacti housing, thereby briefly commenting on the EHS-1000HD's susceptibility to flooding:
Apropo flooding, a few samples earlier versions of this housing reportedly have had some flooding issues, which upon checking was due to user misalignment of the camera in the housing. The camera inserts into the housing with opened LCD directly as it is, without any trays or adapters. Epoque attended to the problem and improved the housing by installing a nicely, chromed semi circle bracket on the top and 2 plastic brackets in the middle and bottom part to align the camera. Misalignment is therefore passé, however a caution note is still included in the housing packaging, warning users to be careful.
