Ultimate Digital Camera

We live in a throw-away society, it’s a simple fact. You buy that brand new fancy digital camera with all the bells and whistles for $400, and in 6 months to 1 year it’s worth maybe half that, and then the unthinkable happens: you drop it and it breaks. The screen is broken or the lens is broken or stuck, so what do you do? You head back to the store with your poor little camera and the guy behind the counter (that knows nothing about cameras except for what’s written on the box, and even less about camera repair) tells you it’s not worth it to fix it and you should toss it in the trash. You feel ripped off and mad at the camera manufacturer and you toss it out and buy a new one made by somebody else.

There are alternatives, there are ALWAYS alternatives to every problem. Honest! Yes, it may cost 0 to fix your camera, and yes you can buy that camera in the bubble pack on the shelf at Wall Mart for less than 0, but what kind of quality do you honestly expect from a 0 camera? You shouldn’t expect high quality that’s for sure, because you won’t be getting it.

#1 – Cracked, broken, smashed LCD screen.

I found it difficult to decide between broken lens repair and cracked LCD screen repair for #1, but I choose the LCD because it can be broken so easily that you can do it without even touching the camera!

The LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) is the view screen on the back of the camera that lets you see menus, playback pictures etc. An LCD screen is a very thin and fragile part of the camera and on many of them it is completely unprotected! Take a look at your LCD screen; is it slightly recessed or does it look like it’s flat and even all the way across? 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. Excessive high tempertures could cause the LCD to expand such that it cracks, and conversely extremely low temperture could 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 store your camera in your pants pocket, it can easily break from the pressure.

- … 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 still try, but they will most likely not fix it.

- Look for a defective camera on eBay 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! While I can’t pick one brand …. is the best and Brand … is the worst, it’s really not like that. There are certain series of cameras that have one or two models that are more difficult to repair but the others are more straight forward. You will have to figure out if you want to try opening your camera and repairing it by yourself or not.

How is an LCD replaced?

With most Canon camera LCD repair 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. Sometimes the LCD backlight will need soldering to the PCB of the camera or to the LCD ribbon cable, but most often it will not.

- Be sure to never touch the flash capacitor contacts! You will shock yourself pretty good if you do it and it will hurt a bit. You may end up tossing the camera half-way across the room when it happens to you. (Yes I have done it, I have been repairing digi cams for about 5yrs so….) We use an item called a “flash capacitor discharger” and we use them every time we work on a camera.

I hope this sheds some light on the subject of camera repair. There’s no need to toss out your camera just because the LCD screen is broken, in fact you might be able to fix it yourself!