4 Mpix camera

Typical simple digital camera, so called soapbox, is quite expensive (in our country) device and it is carefully handled by user. And nobody opens the camera body just for fun. All digital cameras are quite complicated electronic devices and more, photo-camera with moving objective lenses is quite complicated mechanically. Also, when opening such device at home, always some dust manage to get inside it. I am getting very nervous, when I put last screw to its place and discover horse hair somewhere inside the lenses or behind small LCD…

But I received about twenty damaged digital cameras for testing and now situation is much brighter as circumstances are new: no need to repair, if I damage something- no problem, if I fix it, I can keep it for myself. I have Samsung Digimax A4/401/400/430 and some LG models.

… so the repair procedure is very simple. Test all devices and sort them according damage. Mechanical lenses damage, electronics not responding, bad image due to damage of CCD and etc. Now it is time to make some swapping :).

This damage is very simple and very easy to repair:

Just swap LCD with other one and everything is ok. There are more problems with cameras without moving parts. Most of them didn’t switch on. But one was with damaged buttons (need to re-solder one connector) and other was with zebra-like image (the CCD sensor is damaged, or just some leg unsoldered). So these were repaired.

LCD of the camera is LTV180WQ LCD and Casio 5D16BRD…

Main problem while playing with such devices is the assemblage and disassemble procedure. There are special service manuals with step by step instructions how to break it apart. I don’t have ones, so I need to invent them by myself. Doing this I damaged flexible PCB in two places. If it was the only device on the shelf and I needed to repair it I would be in deep trouble. Now, when I have lots of them- who cares!

This model is very unfriendly made- three PCBs are soldered in angle. I need to desolder lots of places to take them apart. And I need to do this if I need to change objective lenses with all mechatronics.

Typical damage- small plastic parts broken due to some pressure to objective while switching camera on. It very easy to do this- just place camera inside some bag and accidentally press power on. There must be some detection of heavy load on objective movement motor to stop it.