Camera repair, thought it was worth a shot.

[generally01]

Lumix TZ7 compact lense swap.


Befor we start its the disclaimer and *WARNING* Do not carry out this repair unless you are really confident about opening your camera up.

Allow for the possibility of the repair not working and your camera being scrap. If you cant handle this possibility leave it alone and take it to a professional.

The reason I decided to carry out this repair was down to the effects seen in part 1 of this set.

A lot of online "experts" will argue that dust on the lense will not effect picture quality but I was finding that the dust in the lense was a problem.

I had opened the camera a few times to clean the sensor as this is a common fault but dust on the sensor in my experience causes dark patches, the patches in part 1 are light and to me very different to the effect of a dirty sensor.

I hope you find this useful but please do not hold me responsible if you try this job and fail.

Here is an example of the problem. This picture was taken on a dry day and the outside of the lense was completely clean.


Lumix repair Pt1 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

I had also ruled out dirt on the sensor as I have had a few cases of dirt on the sensor and as it is directly on the sensor it tends to show up as dark patches, not the light areas seen here.

I had to use a lesser quality camera to take pictures of the process but you may be able to make out the specks of dust inside the lense.

The black ring is glued to my lense and is threaded to let me use filters on my compact camera.


Lumix repair Pt2 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

Job 1 is getting into the camera. With a size 0 phillips screwdriver I went round the camera body and removed the screws. I removed the fixings for both the front and back covers of the camera.


Lumix repair Pt3 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

With the covers removed you need to remove the ribon cables for the screen.

See part 6 for a close up of how the connectors work.

The tripod mount also needs to come off. To remove it, slide it to the left as you look at this picture then lift it out.


Lumix repair Pt4 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

With the covers removed I have laid out the parts along with the new lense unit seen on the right.


Lumix repair Pt5 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

The ribon cable on the bottom operates the lense and the ribon connector above is for the sensor.


Lumix repair Pt6 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

To remove the ribon cables from the connector, gently pry up the grey bar and then pull the cable from the cconnector.

Be careful with the ribons, they damage easily.

With the ribons disconnected its time to remove the 3 screws that hold on the lense unit.


Lumix repair Pt7 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

On the left is the old unit and on the right is the new one.


Lumix repair Pt8 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

The new unit is supplied without a sensor so this needs swapped over.

The sensor unit is the silver plate in the middle of the lense and is held on with 3 screws.

If simply doing a sensor clean you can bypass part 5-7 and with the sensor screws undone lift the sensor up to clean it.

This is a view of the important side of the sensor.


Lumix repair Pt9 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

If doing this yourself, make sure the filter is attached to the front of the sensor when you remove it.

Make sure you do not touch the front of the sensor or the filter and try and keep everything as dust free as possible.

With the sensor swapped over its time for re-assembly.


Lumix repair Pt10 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

You will find it easier to set the screws in place on the lense before lowering into the body as they are pretty fiddly to get in once the lense is fitted.

Make sure you don't force anything, it will all sit in place without pressure.

Re-fitting the ribbon cables is straight forward enough but again be careful not to kink or crease them.

Once they are back in place you can close over the grey bars to lock them in place.


Lumix repair Pt11 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

Before closing the body I put the battery back in and gave the camera a quick test, making sure my fingers were away from the flash capacitor.


Lumix repair Pt12 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

All seemed good so I finished off assembly and you will be able to see how successful the job was with my future pictures.

Hope you enjoyed watching me risk my camera but in my opinion, nothing ventured nothing gained.

Dave

[chairchild]

Not bad! Took the other halfs Kodac point+shoot camera apart last year, as she'd dropped it, and the lense wasn't opening/moving


She bought another camera, so I had nothing to lose! Took the whole lense assembely apart, managed to re-align everything, and it even worked when I put it back together!




Well.. about 3 times, until the lense crapped itself, as the internal guides were actually broken. But still, a worthy bit of playtime!

[waveman1500]

Impressive. Someone who actually meddles with modern 'disposable' consumer electronics! Worth doing if you can fix it yourself. Stuff is so cheap now and labour is so expensive that if you take it to a professional then you may as well buy a new one!

I love the idea of gluing on a mount for attaching filters. That's inspired.

[generally01]

Cheers guys, next job is to dismantle the old lense unit to clean out the dust.

The filter ring has come in really useful for using magnifier lenses on the front to get super close up shots.


january tortie by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr


january tortie 5 by route9autos.co.uk, on Flickr

Dave

[Rich606]

I have two broken point-and-shoots (4 digital cameras broken in 7 years : that I tried to take apart, but I always got a bit scared of removing the ribbon cables so never progressed further than that. I might give it another go now that you've shown it's safe to do. Excellent

[generally01]

Cool, let us know how you get on and if they are already broken what have you got to lose?

For spare parts ebay seems to be the best place and you tube has loads of how to videos so try searching the make and model you need to fix.

Dave

[TopJobHobNob]

cool title pun.

[mantakev]

Most people will already know this but be careful when taking a camera apart as the flash capacitor can give a huge jolt and people have been known to convert that part into a taser!
I got stung by a capacitor in a camera, I won't let it happen again

[whippet]

i also found out the flash holds a charge after the cameras in bits, i bit my tongue the charge was that strong,
as i found this funny i asked my wife to help me fix the camera and hold this part of the camera for me,
oh how i laughed as the camera flew through the air , she didn't speak to me for a few days though,

[generally01]

The day after this project I took the camera out to try it and all was not well The lens refused to focus when above 6x zoom so a look on you tube for directions I dismantled the lens unit and cleaned out the inside.

This was the video I followed;



That solved the dust problem and the focus problem.

After my success I was feeling like a camera repair god so I headed straight for ebay to see if I could get another patient for my new camera hospital.

Having had great results from my TZ7 and as I had been inside my own I decided to stick to what I know and bought this Panasonic DMC-ZS3, the NTSC version of my camera;



It came boxed, with all the cords and instructions for less than a tenth of the price of my camera when new. The bad bit?

Smashed screen;


Now before I go any further its the disclaimer and *WARNING* Do not carry out this repair unless you are really confident about opening your camera up.

Allow for the possibility of the repair not working and your camera being scrap. If you cant handle this possibility leave it alone and take it to a professional.

First thing to do was sourse a new srceen so off to ebay and for £15 a new screen was on its way from Hong Kong.



Job one was to get into the camera. The back is held on with 6 screws but make sure if you do this job to use the correct size zero screwdriver or you will chew up the screw heads.

As before, with the back off we have to be careful with the ribon cables;



The ribon cable can be disconnected from the circuit board by carefully lifting the tab on the connector and gently pulling out the screen ribon and the smaller (and more fragile) back light cable;



Now the camera is in two parts we can put the lens section to one side. I chose to give the sensor a quick clean while it was open before moving on to concentrate on the screen half;



The screen is sandwiched in a metal holder which is fixed to the camera by these small tabs;



These are gently levered out and the complete screen unit comes away from the plastic body.



On the side of the screen you look at there is a plastic cover thats simply held on with a soft adhesive. This needs peeled off;



This gives us access to the screen and frame. The frame is held to the screen mount by tabs around the outside which need gently prised apart to let the screen and frame lift out.



Strangely, the screen frame in a Panasonic camera is embossed with a Sony mark;



We are still not quite at the screen, this frame needs removed from the screen. The frame is in two parts, held together with an interferance fit. The front and the back of the frame need to be prised appart and they have the rigidity of the tin foil Kit-kats come wrapped in;



Now we can start the re-assembly. Not surprisingly you need to be very careful not to touch the screen or you will permanently have finger prints on it.

This is the new screen fitted in the frame with the old screen in the background;



From this point on, re-assembly is pretty much the reversal of the dismantling procedure so if your memory is bad, try and find another camera to record each part of the sequence as you work.

With it back together its time to try it;



Success. I now have a danger camera for more risky missions that cost me a lot less than it would have new.

Dave.

[The Doctor]

i did this with one of my old cameras (a danger cam as well), i had one with a broken lense and one with a broken screen, made one good out of the 2 and it went on for a couple of years, hitting cones whilest taped to cars etc. etc.
In the end i threw it out because i had a card reading error and i broke the card reader from the donor cam

Didn't know about the flash capacitator though, guess i was lucky a couple of times

[djefk]

Dave,

I can't believe my luck in finding your thread!

Here's mine. It's been....ahem... well used / loved - It came round NZ and Asia plus Sri Lanka and South Africa with us on our honeymoon. It's exactly the same model as yours:





It has a minor issue resulting from yours truly letting it drop out of my pocket whilst cycling in Vietnam :




However the main problem is this - A scratch on the lens that you can see if you look hard:




This was affecting the quality of the shots it can take. I'd got despondent with it and basically given it up as fooked until I read this.

Now I'm on the hunt for a spares / repair one so I can build one from the two. They appear to be going for around 50 quid in the UK - I can't find any broken ones here in Asia and I'm back in the UK in two weeks for a wedding. Even if it doesn't work out then at least I know I did everything I could to save it - You can get one secondhand on Ebay in perfect working order for around £100 so not really worth taking it to repair shop.

As a thank you to you I'll be posting up how I get on here.

[generally01]

Wow, did you drop it then ride over the top of it? :-)

I mentioned that I bought a relacement lens unit for my camera and found it didnt work on full zoom before cleaning and puting the old one back in. This means I still have the complete lens unit sitting here.

I contacted the seller who assures me that in 99% of cases it is a straight swap but sometimes the camera needs re set.

I don't know if thats BS or not to be honest but the lens unit is here and I can post it on to you for the £25 it cost me and you can either swap the complete unit or dismantle and clean yours and use the outer element from the new one?

Your camera is a newer model to mine but I checked the lens specification and that is the same.

Dave.

[djefk]

PM'd..