On Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:41:21 -0400, Meat Plow wrote:

On Fri, 02 Nov 2007 20:07:37 +0000, Al wrote:

In article ,
Meat Plow wrote:

On Fri, 02 Nov 2007 18:38:33 +0000, Al wrote:

My daugher-in-law fell while holding her camera. It banged against the
ground and the outer iris was lost when it fell into the adjacent water.

Every function in the camera works except....you can't take a picture.
What you see is a black screen with very dim horizontal noise hash. When
you take a picture, the black screen shows up in the photo gallery as
though a picture had been taken.

I had disassembled it and examined all I could with a magnifying glass and
have not found any anomalies. Yes, I know, they could really be tiny. I
reassembled it and there is no change in behaviour.

I know it's not worth it to have it repaired. Has anyone experienced such
a failure and discovered the fix?

BTW, I banged it in the opposite direction from which she recalls it hit
the ground. No Joy!


I guess the fix would be to replace the optic part that is missing?


What's missing just a piece of plastic that covers the lens when it is
retracted. I did not see any electrical nor mechanical mechanisms
associated with it other than opening of the external protective plastic
iris.


Next guess, the CCD is damaged.

Will you find someone here that has dropped their Coolpix 3200, had the
same problem, and ultimately fixed it? Chances are very slim.

I did however repair a Gateway branded 5.0 megapix camera that had been
dropped on the telescoped lens assembly. With the batter removed I pulled
the lens all the way out by hand. Reinstalled the battery and it did
retract back into the camera about 75%. This time with the camera on, I
hit the off button,waited till it tried to retract the lenes all the way
and push on it with two thumbs until it popped and retracted. Powered it
back on and VOILA! it functioned perfectly. Thing is I got lucky. Maybe
you'll get lucky too, maybe not.

Ahh, I did some more experimenting. I looked into the lens while I took
a picture of my face. I did not see the internal iris open up. Hmmm, I
suppose it is delicate enough so that a sharp swat had distorted it enough
so that it jams.

Bah bye camera. Off to the recycling center.

Al