[Cussy]

It's not dead at all, everything has come back to life, flash and all. It spent 4 weeks drying in the airing cupboard.

However, it is far from perfect. The photos are really washed out. They can be rescued in PS, but the histogram shows that there is no mid-range tones being recorded. What is puzzling me is that it works better in low levels of light and photos in bright sunlight are really bad. Flash illuminated images seem fine, but not with a slave unit.

I've tried everything I can think of, including resetting the white balance. Doesn't seem to have much effect. What I suspect might be the problem is that something has been deposited on the optics. The optical view finder is full of all sorts of nasty looking stuff. The lense on the camera seems to be a sealed unit, so I can't take it apart easily to clean properly.

As I've been quoted £75 for Olympus just to assess it, I'm looking at a new system. I loved the C4000, but I was reaching several limits of the system and the silent video was always annoying, plus it is one of the old housings so could only go to 30m. On above water trips the 128Mb limit of SM was also a problem. As I like natural light wide-angle photos in poor vis, I think the "fogged" image is going to be a real big problem.

So I've talked myself into a new one, not decided which one yet, but the Oly 7070 is the front runner at the moment. It would be my 4th Olympus and I've never had a problem with them, apart from being a prat and flooding one!!!!!

And yes Tim, I have looked at the Fuji. Main reason for the Oly at the moment over the Fuji is the very high quality video and the fact the Oly will take both Compact Flash and xD, so film capacity shouldn't be a problem. The battery life is also exceptional and the extra wide-angle suits my photography. I also use the Olympus auto panorama function a lot and would miss it....although panotools does the same.

By the way, the advice on a flooded camera is to put it in a bucket of fresh water as soon as possible after removing the batteries and film. Then dry them out (slowly) and not to over-heat them too much with a hairdrier. As my experience shows, they do come back to life.