Good evening all. Recently, with the end of daylight savings and an hour more to move in the morning before work, I have been getting out most every day and either surfing, of if the surf is no good I've been taking a few pics. This week was pretty poor on surf so I got in 3 solid days of some great photos. On Thursday, however, disaster struck:

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You're probably thinking, how the heck did he let that happen? Why was his reaction so slow and why was he still shooting as his camera toppled to it's death? All very valid questions I have asked myself too. The only answer is that I was in a stupid daze, eyeing off my next potential photo - a big panoramic shot from from Bungan to Warriewood. It looked awesome in my mind. Only problem is you need a camera to take such photos, and following what happened above my camera was soaked. I stopped the fall just before the camera impacted with the rockpool / rocks, but it got soaked by the wave you can see in the snaps.

Holding back the tears I retreated to the cliff and tried to dry everything but it was a horror scene. 2 days later my camera and lens have been left to dry out. Amazingly, it looks like my camera will battle on wounded but working. The ol' Canon 40D has sadly lost all shooting details through the viewfinder - exposure, aperture, shutter speed etc. The electronics are stuffed but I can still use the top of the camera to play with and view all these settings. So that's manageable.

The worst thing that happened, and the reason for this post. My very expensive and new Sigma wide-angle lens seems to be the main casualty. It originally would not register with the camera at all. Now it does, but it cannot auto focus anymore. It just does not communicate at all. No hint of auto focus at all. I think I can manually focus, but I have no interest in pursuing that.

So my question is this - has anyone ever had this problem? Is it fixable? Is it expensive if it is fixable? Any do-it-yourself tips?

If anyone can help I will come to your house and hug you. Any tips on what to do with my beloved lens would be most appreciated. Can't bear the thought of having wasted all this money.

And while we're at it, is there any fixing the electronic display in the viewfinder of the camera? Or is that wrecked now for good?