Frugal Fixing: Digital Camera Edition
Nov 19th, 2008 by Carlos
M and I love to take pictures, and that’s why I bought her a Canon SD600 camera a few years back. It’s compact and takes great pictures (she helps too, of course). She’s always getting compliments about her photos and I can tell how much she enjoys taking pictures. Plus she uses it for work too. In all, it’s been one of the best gifts I’ve ever given her, or anyone for that matter.
The problem is we like going to the beach too, and we like to take our cameras (I know, not the best combo). Both of them had started making this grinding noise when the lens came out or retracted. The culprit? Sand in the telescopic lens. But no worries, the camera still worked just fine.
Until this weekend. M’s camera would no longer open and an error message showed up when you tried to start it up. This was terrible news. I called Canon and they told me it would cost $90 to fix since the warranty was out.
So, being the cheap guy that I am, I decided to try and save us some money and fix the camera myself. If I could. Here’s what I did:
- TONS of research: If you’re having a problem, odds are a bunch of other people have too and they know how to fix it.
- More research
- I talked to M about me possible opening up her baby and trying to fix it (and got the green light)
- I bought one of those eyeglass kits with the tiny screwdrivers
- I took a deep breath
- I opened it up
I was nervous because I didn’t know what I would find underneath the casing, but I had a pretty good pictorial guide of what I would find and what I needed to do, so I just followed that. After 20 minutes or so, the camera sprung back to life! Success!
It still makes that grinding noise but it’s back to working the way it did before. We saved $90 and all is well.
The lesson? You can probably fix almost anything you own if you put some time into it. Researching ahead of time is the key and then having some patience and trusting yourself.
PS If you’re going to do this, make sure you have a container or something under you—those tiny screws get lost REAL easy in plush carpets…
