Digital Camera Repair Blog

It was hard for me to choose what to put in #1 and #2, but I stuck with the broken digital camera LCD screen for #1 because it’s so easy to break your LCD that you don’t even have to touch the camera to do it!

The LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) is the view screen on the back of the camera that lets you see menus, playback pictures etc. The LCD is very thin, very fragile, and on many many cameras completely UNPROTECTED! Look at the back of your camera, is the screen recessed slightly or is the back of the camera flat and smooth? If it’s flat you have a protective ‘window’ or ‘glass’ over the LCD to help prevent damage and breakage. If it’s not flat, you have nothing protecting your LCD and should put a good quality LCD screen protector on the camera and NOT those thin, flimsy ‘saran wrap’ plastic film screen protectors, they are worthless.

- Don’t leave your camera in your car in summer or winter. Extreme heat can cause expansion of the liquid in the LCD and cause it to ‘crack’, and on the other side of things extreme cold can cause it to freeze!
- Don’t put anything up against the LCD in your camera bag, it will bang against the LCD and crack it (yes, even if it has a window over it, it will break!)
- Don’t put your camera in your back pocket and then sit down!
- Don’t put your camera in your front pocket and then roll over on it.
- … Just don’t put your camera in your pants pocket please. =)

Ok, so it’s broken, what do you do now?
- The manufacturer will just site impact damage and will refuse the repair even if the camera wasn’t dropped etc. You can try, and I wish you luck, but they probably won’t fix it.
- Look for a defective camera on e***y (hey they don’t pay me to advertise for them…) and make one good camera from the two if you are handy.
- Look for an actual camera repair business and not somebody that will send it to the manufacturer and tell you it’s $200 and 4-6 weeks to repair. (IF they tell you this, they are NOT repairing your camera for you, they are sending it to the manufacturer, guaranteed)

Many LCD screens are very easy to install and you can do it yourself and all you need is a small screwdriver. Other LCD’s are very difficult to install, and even professionals don’t like to do them! I can’t tell you Brand …. is the best and Brand … is the worst, it’s really not like that. Certain SERIES of cameras have 1 or 2 models that are difficult to work on, yet the rest of them are fairly straight forward. You need to decide for yourself if you want to open your camera and try the repair yourself or not.

How is an LCD replaced?
With most Canon digital camera LCD screens for example (using them as the example because they have the largest market share) all you do is disconnect the ribbon cable for the LCD and the backlight (the light that shines through the LCD and allows you to see what is on the screen) and then install the new LCD. Some come with the backlight attached, some do not. Some backlights need to be soldered to the mainboard of the camera, some do not.
- Be careful to not touch the flash capacitor contacts! You WILL zap yourself if you do, and it will HURT a bit. You will probably throw your camera across the room when it happens. (Yeah, I’ve done it, I’ve been repairing cameras for 5 years now so….) We have ‘flash capacitor dischargers’ and use them every time we open a camera.

#2 – Lens Error; Broken, Jammed, Stuck, Missing or Black Spots on Images

So your battery door broke off and is gone.
Your battery door has broken tabs on it and no longer holds closed tightly so the batteries don’t make contact and the camera won’t turn on.
Your battery door is removable on your SLR so you can add on a grip with extra batteries… and where exactly did you put it down?
The tiny little piece of plastic on your CF (Compact Flash memory card) door broke off and your camera won’t turn on!

Oh man… how many cameras out there will not turn on because your memory card door is open, or the battery door is open, even though there really seems to be no reason for it? It’s frustrating… these flimsy little battery doors made from a tiny glob of plastic are ultra thin and snap like a dry twig, (Canon Powershot SD750 battery door.. don’t get me started!) making your camera useless. What were they thinking when they designed this?? Did ANYBODY test this thing? Did anybody stop for one second and ask what the reason was behind it?

I could work for ANY major digital camera company and tell them exactly what is wrong with the design of any new camera they release and save them hundreds of thousands of dollars in warranty repairs and upset customers! Think they would hire me? No way; I don’t have an Engineering Degree or a PHd is Physics so what do I know, right?

Well I know plenty having fixed THOUSANDS of cameras over the past 5+ years, I know what is wrong with your camera if it is a certain model before you even tell me.
Sony H2 or H5? Broken shutter button. Canon SD850? Jammed lens Canon SD750? Broken battery door… I’m not going to list dozens of cameras here, that’s not what this is about.

What do you do with your camera when one small piece of plastic is broken or missing? You paid hundreds for it and once again the guy at the store tells you “Throw it in the trash, this one is better, it goes to 11.” (A little movie humor there, hey it’s 1:30am I’m entitled) Tell that guy at the store a resounding “NO!” and walk out. Go home, get on the computer and get surfing.

Back we go to e**y… search for your model number and “door” or “parts” and voila, look at what you find!
—> As a side note here (I’m kinda proud of this so bear with me) I was the first and only digital camera parts store in the world on e**y. I bought cameras by the 100′s and repaired what I could and then parted out the rest. I sold all those annoying little parts that you cannot buy anywhere for dirt cheap! $10 for a battery door and all you do to install it is twist it into place… and that “geek” at the store told you it would be $175 to send it in to Canon or Sony and have them do it for you…

So you don’t find your door or part there, keep looking, don’t give up yet. Don’t want to repair it yourself, no problem, there are places that will do it for you. Hopefully you will find one with decent prices; don’t pay anyone $50 to install a battery door for you… please.
(Google: affordable digital camera repair… I hold 7 out of the 10 listings on Google page one!! But enough about me…)

Broken battery doors and memory card doors are very common. I think we would see a lot more customers asking for them if only they knew they could actually repair it and get their camera back working for less than $25-30! It really is that cheap, with many doors for only $15-20.

- I don’t know what happened, it just stopped working and won’t turn on.
- I dropped it, (I dropped it in water) and it won’t turn on.
- My kids… (well, you know how that one ends)

Ok, so it won’t power; doesn’t mean it’s a complete loss. If the camera blew the fuse then you can solder on a new fuse, you can remove the old fuse and bridge the connection leaving the camera without a fuse (not recommended) or you can replace the entire board that the fuse is on.

Fuses are normally just a few dollars, and if you can solder really well, you can probably replace it. Can’t solder? Don’t bother. Replacing the board isn’t hard, but getting the board for a decent price is unless you go used and you never know what you’re getting with a used board or lens, but it’s better than nothing.

Exposure to liquid is a camera killer. I hate to say it, but if this is the issue with your camera, I would have to tell you that the camera is a goner. I want to help you repair it, but corrosion is bad, real bad. Water gets everywhere and causes damage to everything. It clouds up the backlight so your LCD screen has weird shadows on it, it fogs up the lens so you can’t take pictures, it shorts out boards and flashes and is basically the nemesis of all things digital camera. Please do not get your camera wet. Thanks.

Argh! What did my kids do this time? The camera won’t work anymore, what’s wrong with it? Could be our friend the fuse again as above, or could be a “door indicator switch” that tells the camera to turn off when the door is opened. If the switch is damaged the camera will not turn on even when the door is closed.

You can check this by opening your battery door or memory card door and looking for the switch, it’s not hard to see. On Canon Powershot SD series cameras there is one under the battery door beside the memory card slot. See it? Is it broken, jammed up, or totaly broken off? You can try “tricking” the camera into thinking the door is always closed by jamming down the switch, or bridging the connection with a drop of solder. If the camera is under warranty do not do this, try getting them to fix it… though they proabaly will not, and will just fall back on the old “physical damage” thing again. Can’t fix the switch, have to replace the board, only real solution to the problem.

It’s not corrosion, it’s not the door switch, and it still won’t turn on; so what’s wrong? Honestly, it’s difficult to say without $100,000 equipment that I just don’t have. The lens can be defective for whatever reason and causing the camera to short out. There are certain models where a bad LCD will cause the camera to not power. Could be the flash, could be a screw touching the PCB or the frame inside the camera and is causing it to short… Electricity is weird and does weird things.

Right about now you are probably wondering if this book will ever come to an end. No, it won’t, because there are so many different things that can and do go wrong with digital camera repair that there really isn’t a way to list them all. Will my post ever end? Yes, it will thankfully enough.

I do hope that I have been able to shed some light on the mysterious subject of digital camera repair, and if I have helped you to fix your camera I would love to hear about it! I enjoy this business because I know how important a camera is to a person; you want to be able to record the events of your life and they only happen once. Once that time has come and gone you cannot get it back, but with a photograph you can be transported back to that place and time any time you choose. If I can help you with that… to be a small part of so many peoples lives in such an important way is an amazing thing and gives me a “warm fuzzy”.

Thomas Drayton