Dissecting Digital Camera
 

Just in case anyone has a broken digital camera and decides to try fixing it: Be warned! The camera I was working on is ~8 years old and stopped focusing. So, I took it apart and found one gear tooth that was broken. The mess in the picture below is what I had to take apart just to get to the offending gear. Arrg!

The sad part is that most of it still works! I may see what I can throw together so I can use the little screen to watch movies. Probably won't get far, but should be fun! :)

WOW that is a lot of parts. I usually take something apart and put it back to gather on memory without a Manuel but not a camera i would defiantly have to take some disassembly pics so i remember what goes were. Cool though all that fits in that small case.

So much for taking pictures as you go to put it back together.

The Brain doesn't need no stinking manuals

Holy crap...my digital camera better stay working...

My first Sony?

Well, it was an old camera so I thought I'd see if I could find what is wrong with it. I had taken it apart a little before but found the gear mechanism was buried deeper than I could reach. I have a new camera now, so I figured I'd have nothing to lose. Well, I started taking it apart, keeping track of what goes where, but when it got to a certain level, I knew it wasn't going back together. The offending gear mechanism was actually inside the lens tube. And to get to that, you have to take everything else apart to get to the screws which secures it in place. And it's not set up where you can take off a large assembly off... oh no... you have to take everything off in layers.

So, if you have a broken camers (especially the gears) consider simply buying a new one! Even if I had taken it to a camera shop, it would have costed me way more than it was worth to fix it.

After messing wth this, an ESC is child's play!

Thats alot of kajiggers! LOL!

Heck yeah it is! I would never remember what goes where! I had hard enough time with my ps2!

Brian, I will give you 5 bucks if you put it all back together. And 5 more if it works. LOL!!!!

LOL, nice try GD! It would take a heck of a lot more than that just to attempt it!

It's already all in the garbage... after I salvaged all the parts I could for future projects. :)

Thats 10$ you could have had in your pocket if you Just spent 10 hours on it! :005:

OOOoooh! A whopping $1 an hour!

I'll be nice and attempt it if he pays just half of my hourly salary that I get at work. :)

I dont think he'll pay that much to see an old-school camera work and together... right GD? :)

Yeah, you're probably right. No matter what, it wouldn't work anyway since it was broken even before I took it apart!

yeah :) i remember pain then i took apart my camera after it crashed to the ground i bought second camera with broken eletronics parts parts. And i had similar mess in my table. I am good in electronics but here i was realy worried how i will put all those things together. So thin wires to weld so thin and small thins so compact. And what i remember how flash light capacitor discharged on my finger Grrrr:037: it felt realy bad :)
I not recomend to take Digital camera to apart if you are not so good in electronics and mechanics and with good memory and big patience :)

lol, my flash charge cap was "only" 300v, so it wasn't that bad. :) Once I saw where the offending gear was (inside the lens tube) I knew for sure it wasn't going back together. Besides, I highly doubt I'll find a replacement gear that's broken (it's soooo tiny!).

No matter though, the camera was old, picture quality was not good by today's standards, etc. My replacement camera (Canon A620 IIRC) is smaller, lighter, has more features, more pixels/resolution, and was wayyy cheaper.

I just thought it was neat that all those parts were stuffed into that case. And believe me, it was stuffed in there!