It was pouring with rain most of the day on Thursday, May 25th, 2006.

For a long time before I was thinking of doing some rain photography (pictures that are soaked in water look great in my opinion, plus they are pretty rare as there is only a handful of cameras that can handle rain - mine included), so right after work I took my camera and headed downtown.

People were looking at me strange, I must have looked pretty ridiculous, I was wearing a pair of big black army boots (pools of water everywhere), a jacket with a hood (rain falling continuously), shorts (hot, temperature around 25/77 degrees C/F), I had a camera bag on my shoulder, and a huge camera (Canon EOS 1D with EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS L lens) in my hand.
I spent maybe two hours downtown, it was a lot of fun, very productive (see the pics here) and rewarding. I got soaked through though, it was really raining hard.
When I decided I've had enough I put the camera in the bag, and headed home, on foot, as at that time of day it's usually impossible to get a taxi, especially when it's raining, plus I didn't want to get in a car in such a state, and also I didn't want to make a spectacle of myself on the metro.
So I walked, it took me an hour, when I got home, changed and dried, I got the camera from out of the bag... It didn't work...
After I switched it on, an error message appeared, 'Error 99,' which stands for 'change battery.' I did that, it didn't help at all, the camera menus would come on, for a second or two, and then the camera would shut down...
I opened all the compartments - memory card, the jacks for connecting the cam to the computer, etc, the battery. There was a drop of water inside the battery compartment.
I dried it as best as I could, nothing happened.
The following day, as soon as the shops opened, I took a taxi downtown to a repair centre.

Five days passed... I started researching my options, thinking that if my blunder damaged the camera beyond repair, or if the repair would be too expensive, well, good-bye 36 thousand yuan (that's how much the camera cost three years ago), and my only choice would be buying a new camera, how much it would cost, and where the best deal would come from, locally, in Hong Kong, in the USA.
And then on Tuesday when I returned home from work the red light on my answering machine was blinking, I pressed the button. A very laconic - hello, your camera is OK.
Short and to the point, but beautiful words...
Totally my fault, I got carried away and forgot that my camera is weather-proof, and not water-proof; I guess I will remember this in the future. It works fine, I hope I will not have to buy a new one (tempting as it is, the newest model is cooooool) for a long time.
Should anyone be in need of some help from the Canon people in Shanghai, here's the address:
381 HuaiHai Lu (near HuangPi Lu metro station), ZhongHua Tower, 13th floor
tel.: 021 6391 6511
06.2006