• Andrew
• Jun 27,2008
• In: Blog

How I saved $100 by fixing my own Camera

It’s quick, simple, cheap, and you can do it too! I mean, no sense in worrying about breaking something if it’s already broken, right?

So two weeks ago the camera lens’ on my Sony Cybershot DSC-S40 stopped coming out, rendering the camera unusable aside from playback mode. Today I decided to call Sony’s Technical Support line for assistance on fixing this. They gave me two methods which consisted of a power-drain, and re-initialization of the camera’s settings. Neither of these methods worked so they told me I’d have to send it in for repairs and it’d cost around $91.00 to fix.

Highly turned off by the price-tag for what could be such a simple fix, I said I’d call back if I was interested and grabbed a pair of eyeglass screwdrivers.

I took out the screws on the exterior to begin. Though you couldn’t actually open the camera, you could slightly seperate the two halves of the plastic casing, thus allowing any small particles that somehow got in to fall out. I tried turning it back on again, the lens were able to actually move themselves a tiny bit, but not enough still.

The camera turned back off after a few seconds of attempting multiple cycles to push out the lens. I turned it back on so the lens-shield was out of the way, and poked at the part responsible for moving the lens a few times, and fished the screw-driver in a circle around the lens.

It turned off again, so I turned it back on. The lens now were able to make it out far enough for me to grab them with my fingers and pull the out the rest of the way. The camera was functionable again, and to just make sure this wouldn’t happen again, I played around with the zoom for about a minute to ensure they could move freely. When I turned the camera off, I had to manually assist in pushing the lens back in, but now I don’t anymore after that one time.

Now the lens come out just fine again and I saved some good money. =]