I just saw a clip on "Dirty Jobs" where they were working in an incinerator. They dumped the incinerator in a bin and it totally inundated a camera operator. They showed his camera, I think it's a Z1, completely covered with ash. It looked like it was packed tightly with dust. I cringed. A moment of silence for a nice HDV camera...

I've seen them abuse quite a few cameras on that show. The one I remember was when the were digging for worms and one of the camera ops went down in knee deep mud. He did try to sacrifice himself for the cam, I think it was a Z1 too, but I don't think the cam could have been salvaged [wipes away a tear].

They have to budget on cams dying on that show, but I've never seen them have a cam in a water-tight housing. You'd think that they would almost always be in one. But who am I to judge?

That's probably why they use Z1s instead of more expensive professional cameras on the extra dirty shoots. I have seen them use pro cameras but they were in a pretty controllable environment.