While climbing Mt. Adams on Friday, I dropped my Canon A590 IS point-and-shoot camera off the NE ridge. We watched it fall down a steep gully, smashing into rocks and bouncing back up. It disappeared and then re-appeared a few seconds later, much lower, still ricocheting down the gully. Finally it stopped about 200' down, apparently still in one piece though it was hard to see. I wanted the photos so I decided to climb down for the SD card. When I reached the camera it was still together, but in pretty bad shape--lens housing was gone, viewfinder frame collapsed, display cover gone, LCD screen smashed, buttons mangled, etc. The CMOS battery, AA's, and SD card were gone.
Here are some photos I took afterward:
Miraculously I found the SD card in the snow about 20' above where the camera had come to rest. So I climbed back up to the ridge and put new batteries in to see if it would power on. Lo and behold--
Half the pixels were gone, most of the rest unintelligible. But I could still see the far right edge of the screen where the light balance meter for manual control is displayed.
So would it take photos?
We couldn't believe it. It took all these post-accident. Here's the gully it fell down (arrow marks where it stopped):
Mt. Adams:
Crestones:
UN 13153:
Indestructible?
