[ad#250 x 250 Adsense]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 go back to there store where you bought it and the kid working there that knows next to nothing about cameras to begin with, let alone camera repair, tells you to throw it in the garbage and it’s not fixable. 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 always alternatives to every problem including this one. Honest! It may cost you $100 to fix your camera, and yes you can buy a new camera these days for $100 at some places, but what sort of quality do you think you will get from a $100 camera? You shouldn’t expect high quality that’s for sure, because you won’t be getting it.
#1 – Cracked, broken, smashed LCD screen.
It was hard for me to choose between a jammed lens and broken LCD screen repair but I stuck with LCD 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. 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. It there is no protective window over the LCD screen then you should invest in a good LCD screen protector made from acrylic plastic and not the silly, useless ‘Saran Wrap’ protectors you always see as they are a waste of money.
- Don’t expose your camera to high heat or extreme cold in your car. Excessive high temperatures could cause the LCD to expand such that it cracks, and conversely extremely low temperture could cause it to freeze!
- Don’t ever put anything pressing against your LCD screen in your camera bag, as it can crack the LCD screen (yes even if there is a window over it there is a chance 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 avoid putting the camera in your pants pocket completely. =)
Ok, so it’s broken, what do you do now?
- Manufacturers usually cite impact damage as the cause of the breakage and will not repair the camera under warranty. You can still try, but they will most likely not fix it.
- Search for defective cameras on eBay and use one to repair yours and make one good camera out of them.
- 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. Some LCD screens are so difficult to replace that even trained technicians don’t like doing the repair! While I can’t pick one 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 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. 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 shock yourself pretty good if you do it 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 use an item called a “flash capacitor discharger” and we use them every time we work on a camera.
My wish is that I have helped you to understand the subject of digital 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![ad#inpost]
Photography News from Around the Web