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Steve, about that dew sensor.

Mar 25, 2005 3:35AM PST

Got your email. But can't respond. Here's why. You have to place the return email in your email.

About the dew sensor. This is from a GOOGLE:
" A Google search gives details from at least one Japanese manufacturer of these. Example:
http://www.hdk.co.jp/pdf/eng/e1322aa.pdf

This document shows you what a typical DEW sensor looks like (the middle diagram, particularly). You'll see that it's basically a couple of wires leading into a small piece of ceramic material, bonded on top of an aluminum plate with a hole through the front of the plate to attach the sensor to equipment. Other websites explain that as the humidity around the ceramic goes up, the resistance in the sensor circuit increases (see graph in HDK's document above). When the resistance reaches a pre-specified level, the circuitry displays a warning message, and shuts down the camera to protect other components. It seemed logical to me that if the resistance across the DEW sensor could be permanently reduced to zero, this could never happen. If the DEW sensor could be short-circuited by soldering across its terminals, it might just work ...? As my camera was old, and just junk anyway unless I could fix it, I had a go. Opened the casing, looked for something that resembled the diagram from the HDK website (it's less than half an inch in length), found it above the video head assembly (big,shiny silver cylinder). Soldered across the wires leading into the sensor (across the black ceramic). Put the camera back together, and it worked! No more DEW warnings, camera works perfectly. It won't tell me if I got it wet or damp any more, or if I've just moved it into a warm damp environment from a cold one (condensation), but I think I can work that out for myself, anyway, now I know that it's a potential problem. Keep it dry, allow warm-up time when moving from cold to warm environments, end of lesson.

Best of luck with yours.
Graham Clark"

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