A Coolpix S9300 was dropped on the lens when I had had it for n a week.

The front metal piece containing the lens cover is severely dented and came off.But the rest of the camera looks fine. However the unit was left with the lens in the out position and wouldn't retract. (actually with a lot of playing with it, the camera works but the non-retracting lens now wont focus on the working screen.

That piece cant cost all that much and must be easy to fit. It looks as if it just pushes on to the front of the forward cylinder. Has anyone any experience of this please and should I take it to a local repair shop which can buy the parts from Nikon if the repair is that easy?

The problem, obviously, is that I have spoken to the shop and whoever answers the telephone there tells me that they send all Coolpix repairs of the slightest complexity back to Nikon (who will charge more than the $100 which the camera is worth to repair it)

Does anyone know how these retractable lenses work please? There is a pin going into the lens which activates the lens cover. Does anyone think that putting the front piece back on will suddenly activate the electronics governing the whole lens again please?

In article ,
Amanda Riphnykhazova wrote:

A Coolpix S9300 was dropped on the lens when I had had it for n a week.

The front metal piece containing the lens cover is severely dented and came
off.But the rest of the camera looks fine. However the unit was left with the
lens in the out position and wouldn't retract. (actually with a lot of
playing with it, the camera works but the non-retracting lens now wont focus
on the working screen.

That piece cant cost all that much and must be easy to fit. It looks as if it
just pushes on to the front of the forward cylinder. Has anyone any
experience of this please and should I take it to a local repair shop which
can buy the parts from Nikon if the repair is that easy?

The problem, obviously, is that I have spoken to the shop and whoever answers
the telephone there tells me that they send all Coolpix repairs of the
slightest complexity back to Nikon (who will charge more than the $100 which
the camera is worth to repair it)

Does anyone know how these retractable lenses work please? There is a pin
going into the lens which activates the lens cover. Does anyone think that
putting the front piece back on will suddenly activate the electronics
governing the whole lens again please?

I'm not familiar with Nikons, but I've repaired the lens assembly on a
number of Panasonic cameras, and I expect they are similar inside.

There are a number of nested tubes, some hollow, some with lenses
inside. The outside of the tubes have three (usually) pins sticking out.
The inside of each tube has matching grooves into which the pins of the
next smaller tube fit. The outer tube has a gear sector on the back, and
a small reversible motor is used to cause it to rotate. As it rotates,
the grooves and pins cause the tubes to extend or retract, sort of like
a nut on a bolt. The grooves follow a very non-linear path, which causes
some of the tubes to move at a different rate than the others, in sone
cases even "backwards" (retracting when other tubes are moving forward).

As you might expect, the pins are small and fragile and the grooves are
shallow. Forcing the lens inward will at least cause some of the pins to
jump out of their grooves, and may actually cause some to break off.

From what you said, it sounds like the lens of your camera has been
jammed in that way.

You might try *gently* rotating the lens while pushing and pulling, to
see if any displaced (but not broken) pins might be persuaded to slip
back into their grooves. I managed to fix a Panasonic camera that way
*once*.

If you send the camera in for repair, it's almost certain that the
entire lens assembly (which includes the auto-focus, zoom, and image
stabilizer mechanisms, and the photo sensor) will be replaced. You're
probably correct, that the actual piece that broke is only worth a few
cents, but the labor involved in getting to it would be huge.

If you feel comfortable working with tiny screws and other components,
paper-thin electrical cables, etc. it is possible to take a camera
apart, disassemble the lens mechanism, glue broken pins back in place,
and put the whole thing back together. I've done it, but for my own
"amusement"; there could never be any money in it. At any reasonable
hourly rate, a new camera would be a lot cheaper.

Isaac

Thanks Isaac for that very full reply. It seems possible to buy these cameras for parts very inexpensively on ebay at the moment and with August approaching, prices will go even lower. How difficult is it to switch out the whole lens assembly mechanism itself like Nikon would do if they did the repair?

Back in the days when smartphones were a rarity, I replaced screens on Wings, 8525s and Wizards and that involved taking the whole phone down to the last screw! What I discovered was that everything is pretty modular and designed to let only semi-skilled third world workers compile these SORTS of things from modules.

Or would the camera never focus to infinity any more if not adjusted with minuscule accuracy when completed? (or does that theory date from the days when film planes were fixed and no longer apply now that intricuate electronics designates when the camera is properly focused?)

In article ,
Amanda Riphnykhazova wrote:

Thanks Isaac for that very full reply. It seems possible to buy these cameras
for parts very inexpensively on ebay at the moment and with August
approaching, prices will go even lower. How difficult is it to switch out the
whole lens assembly mechanism itself like Nikon would do if they did the
repair?

I don't know about Nikons. The Panasonics I've opened up have been
excellently engineered, with clever assembly needing nearly no screws,
plus connectors everywhere so no soldering is necessary. I've opened one
each HP and Olympus, and they were both POS messes of spaghetti wiring
inside. Everything was connected with flying wires (no cables, flat or
otherwise) and screws everywhere -- except for where pairs of boards
were actually soldered together. Impossible to work on, nearly, and if
you tried, you'd have to make a complete record as you took it apart, to
be reasonably sure of getting all the wires properly connected again.

On the Panasonics, the complete lens assembly is attached with three or
four screws, and two flat cables connect everything up. It's a drop-in;
no alignment is necessary.

Isaac

On Sat, 20 Jul 2013, Charlie+ wrote:

On Fri, 19 Jul 2013 21:49:35 -0700, isw wrote as
underneath my scribble :

In article ,
Amanda Riphnykhazova wrote:

Thanks Isaac for that very full reply. It seems possible to buy these cameras
for parts very inexpensively on ebay at the moment and with August
approaching, prices will go even lower. How difficult is it to switch out the
whole lens assembly mechanism itself like Nikon would do if they did the
repair?

I don't know about Nikons. The Panasonics I've opened up have been
excellently engineered, with clever assembly needing nearly no screws,
plus connectors everywhere so no soldering is necessary. I've opened one
each HP and Olympus, and they were both POS messes of spaghetti wiring
inside. Everything was connected with flying wires (no cables, flat or
otherwise) and screws everywhere -- except for where pairs of boards
were actually soldered together. Impossible to work on, nearly, and if
you tried, you'd have to make a complete record as you took it apart, to
be reasonably sure of getting all the wires properly connected again.

On the Panasonics, the complete lens assembly is attached with three or
four screws, and two flat cables connect everything up. It's a drop-in;
no alignment is necessary.

Thanks for posting that useful info, Ill look more closely at Panasonic
when next after a camera! Just to add info for others I broke the
screen on a Pentax Optio 5i compact (very small) and it was for the bin,
so i took it apart - a nightmare once inside and I would say quite
impossible to repair anything to do with the lens system (tiny
beautifully made plastic click together parts with absolutely no
provision for reversing assembly!) without spending hours and hours and
with no guarantee of success! Also really buried inside was a tiny NiCd
soldered in rechargable cell which was leaking - so these cameras have
a time limited life anyway! This Pentax was 5/6 years old - the bin was
definitely the right way to go!
C+

That's the advantage of junk equipment, you can learn from them. Since
they don't work, it doesnt' matter if you damage then, but yo might get it
going. But trying it on something yo don't care about yo may learn that
it's not worth the effort on a good item.

I dragged home an LCD monitor a couple of years ago, and when I plugged it
in, it turne dout the screen had been cracked. So I stripped it down, and
in doing so saw how accessible most of the electronics were. That
prepared me for the next one I found, which did work, but reset
sporadically (bad capacitors in the power supply). The LCD monitors are
so easy to work on compared to CRT monitors or tv sets, the boards are
small, and easy to access and remove, and everything is pretty available
with the power on. The lack of high voltage for the CRT helps, too.

As for the other batteries in digital cameras, that seems common. The
flash on mine keeps turning on, when I keep turning it off, and that
reminded me that it has some button cells accessible from the battery
compartment, to keep something, presumably the settings, alive when the
main batteries aren't in. I think a previous digital camera had some
button cells too.


Michael

I agree with you and say that I have done this to intricate things like Smartphones. What I was wondering was whether it is easy or almost impossibly difficult to take apart a 12MP digital camera. Or is everything very modular, - even if it can be impossible to repair modules themselves? Is anything on this camera likely to be easy to repair, - given how inexpensively they can be bought as repair units?

I am a bit worried that the local camera repairer (who presumably has all the setup and calibration equipment he needs) says that he doesn't do ANY Coolpix repairs. He sends them ALL to Nikon who presumably replace the whole camera 'cos they charge approx the landed price of the new camera for any repair.