Perfect timing. Two field engineers from Canon Professional Services arrived at the Post-Dispatch today. They are part of a scheduled cleaning clinic to clean and fix minor problems in our stable of Canon cameras and lenses. It’s one of the definite cool perks of working at a newspaper that owns thirty-something camera bodies and a huge assortment of glass (lenses).

Canon Field Engineers (L-R) Davy Moy and Brad Krynski clean and check Canon 1D cameras.

Of course the entire staff deluged them with gear — with two camera bodies and three to four lenses per photographer, the cleaning adds up.  And just when they had enough on their plate, I show up carrying two plastic bags — one, a moisture-ridden ziplock with a lens inside, and two, a bread bag (ran out of large ziplocks) with a camera body inside — both bags filled with rice.

What?!

A waterlogged Canon 1D camera and lens wait for help (!) from Canon reps at the Post-Dispatch.

Take a close look. That’s a 24-70 2.8 lens in a ziplock and a Canon 1D Mark IIn (read: expensive) in a bread bag (I’m big on whole wheat).

Let me explain…I covered the floods in Foley on Tuesday, and while trying to help free a boat stuck on a flooded railroad track, a stony embankment gave way, dunking me and my camera and lens straight into the murky flood water. To make matters worse, a downpour from a thunderstorm thoroughly soaked my backup equipment.

John Sisti takes refuge from a thunderstorm in his flooded home near Foley on Tuesday.

It’s not wise to submerge your camera equipment. I assumed as soon as it happened that the camera body would shut down and lock up (it did). The lens, surprisingly, continued to work — barely. My backup camera body, an older Canon digital camera, continued to function — thankfully.

By the way, the fact that the lens continued to work and help me complete my job is utterly amazing. Canon gets huge kudos for building extremely durable and reliable equipment in the worst of conditions. If that lens failed, all would have been lost. The camera body failing — I understand that — but it was the lens that needed to pull through on my second (and less-wet) Canon camera body that made the day.

New firmware (software for cameras) is preloaded onto compact flash cards for Canon engineers to install.

Canon Field Engineer Davy Moy took a look at my gear — quizzically — and then made a call to his home office. He wouldn’t be able to fix it at the paper — it has to be disassembled and dried out at the factory service center. Oh well. It’s on a Fedex plane to New Jersey.

Now let’s not forget the dreaded phone call (I chose email) that all staffers fear to make — letting our Director of Photography know that I just (accidentally!) ruined six thousand dollars of gear. Fortunately, Larry Coyne (our director) was understanding — he cares about the staff — the equipment is completely replaceable. Unfortunately these things just happen when we cover natural disasters. Stuff is going to break, period.

I’m sure Canon’s technicians in New Jersey will enjoy cleaning my mess. It may or may not be a total loss. One of the region representatives is coming tomorrow to say hello. Hopefully he won’t mind when I try to rope him into a loaner camera for a few days while mine is in the shop.

Oddly enough, I shoot with Nikons when I’m not working (I have had Nikon gear since learning photography some 12 years ago) — and it just so happens that I’m trying out a Nikon D300 and one of Nikon’s new lenses courtesy of Carol Fisher from Nikon Professional Services. It’s an amazing camera (no, seriously, it’s amazing) — it also by chance may be my primary camera while my entire Canon kit (of cameras and lenses) dries out.