We've just had a very wet half term holiday in France. It rained every day and on our last full day, which dawned fair, we decided we'd have a crack at the hill on the other side of our valley. A nice climb up to the 909m summit gave us splendid views of the Cevennes and the Ardeche foothills and a visit from a pair of alpine swifts.
On the way down we were treated to a torrential downpour. That was fine - just another 2.5 hours trudging back down the mountain, fording streams that hadn't been there earlier. What I hadn't realised was that my son's dinky and almost brand new camcorder (he'd bought it with birthday money three weeks earlier) was in his pocket, not really protected from the elements at all.
Sure enough, on inspection it had lots of droplets of water inside the lens assembly. These have now mostly dried, and parts of the electrickery inside now work normally but, having for a while had a fuzzy version of the normal image on the viewfinder, it's now black, with the data still showing but nothing coming through from the sensor. The sensor chip seems to have died, which is not altogether surprising.
Does anyone here know whether such damage is economically repairable?
The whole thing cost about £170 so I fear that a skilled repair by a UK-based bod is likely to cost more than a replacement unit, but I just wondered whether this is a familiar scenario and can be remedied by someone (with a knowledge of how these things are put together) snapping a fresh chip in place and telling you not to di it again.
