The video will speak for itself and here's the guy's work and business...
Yes, they spoke volumes to me...as being utterly worthless.
Of course, I merely have two decades worth of professional experience in the "Test & Evaluation" business for the military, where there's a long tradition of vendors with "Snake Oil" products that try to get someone to buy their junk.
In other words, I know how easy it is to pervert a test until nearly anything can be made to pass.
What I saw just from the most casual of observations:
1) Seals designed to be rainproof will of course be sufficient for a ~2 minute exposure to apple sauce, since a more viscous fluid is always less prone to pass through any gap (even one lacking any o-ring seal). Let's see him try a "Acetone-proof" seal test
And even if it did penetrate, it might not have gotten all that far within the selected time period (delay): come back in a couple of days, please.
Finally, the fact that the shutter is able to trigger doesn't prove that the camera is doing anything (like...still taking a proper exposure, or an in-focus picture). Thus, without any before/after photos
and before/after displays of the viewfinders, LCD screen, etc ... his test has proved utterly nothing more than that it didn't have an immediate and catastrophic electrical short circuit. Overall, you're in acomplete "Trust Me" mode of the claims.
2) Dropping. Why Gosh! The camera angle used obscured the actual drop height...it could have been 6 inches. And Golly, no "clickity-clickity-click" this time to prove the shutter could still trigger...I wonder why? And again, without any before/after photos or images of displays, you're in a "Trust Me" mode regarding the claims. Anyone want to take any bets on how far out of alligment the optics are now?
FYI, back in ~1986, I worked on a project where we had to conduct a MIL-STD-810 drop test on a "product that included an optic". The -810 requirement called for around 8 samples to be dropped (different orientations) a total distance of 5ft onto a hard surface (Steel backed by Concrete). Long story short, the optic didn't survive any of the drops, so we ended up spending roughly $10,000 for a protective case for transportation.
To really demonstrate ruggedness/shock resistance, instead of some lame contrived 'demo', you need to have test data performed by an independent lab in accordance with ASTM D3332, ASTM D5487, ASTM E1169 or many other similar existing industry standards.
3) For the scratch test, he never showed that the roof of his matchbox car was unscratched before he started. He then very obviously worked the matchbox a lot harder (longer and with more force) than either of the two short and gentle "unscratched" samples that followed. This one's a classic "arm punching" contest.
4) I've not heard of his Microwave Oven test (I can't watch YouTube here at work), but since the camera doesn't have water, the first question would be if it even has any material that would attenuate to actually become heated, or if the RF would simply bounce off (or pass transparently through). In any event, its not that hard to rig the microwave oven in one fashion or another so that it only *seems* that its tube still works (and has an even field), and given how cheap microwave ovens have become, its not that expensive of an item to wreck in order to rig it for a "demo".
Most people don't realize how incredibly easy it is to fabricate an impressively looking - but technically meaningless - test.
-hh
