#1 Thing That Will Break On Your Digital Camera? LCD Screen!
We live in a throw-away society, it's a simple fact. You buy that brand new fancy digital camera with all the bells and whistles for $400, and in 6 months to 1 year it’s worth maybe half that, and then the unthinkable happens: you drop it and it breaks. The screen is broken or the lens is broken or stuck, so what do you do? You head back to the store with your poor little camera and the guy behind the counter (that knows nothing about cameras except for what’s written on the box, and even less about camera repair) tells you it’s not worth it to fix it and you should toss it in the trash. You feel ripped off and mad at the camera manufacturer and you toss it out and buy a new one made by somebody else.
There are alternatives, there are ALWAYS alternatives to every problem. Honest! Yes, it may cost 0 to fix your camera, and yes you can buy that camera in the bubble pack on the shelf at Wall Mart for less than 0, but what kind of quality do you honestly expect from a 0 camera? You shouldn’t expect high quality that’s for sure, because you won’t be getting it.
#1 - Cracked, broken, smashed LCD screen.
It was hard for me to choose between a jammed lens and a {broken LCD screen but I stuck with LCD for #1 because it’s so easy to break your LCD that you don’t even have to touch the camera to do it~I found it difficult to decide between broken lenses and broken LCD screens for #1, but I choose the LCD because it can be broken so easily that you can do it without even touching the camera}!
The LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) is the view screen on the back of the camera that lets you see menus, playback pictures etc. The LCD is very thin, very fragile, and on many many cameras completely UNPROTECTED! Look at the back of your camera, is the screen recessed slightly or is the back of the camera flat and smooth? If it’s flat you have a protective ‘window’ or ‘glass’ over the LCD to help prevent damage and breakage. If it’s not flat, you have nothing protecting your LCD and should put a good quality LCD screen protector on the camera and NOT those thin, flimsy ’saran wrap’ plastic film screen protectors, they are worthless.
- Don’t leave your camera in your car in summer or winter. Extreme heat can cause expansion of the liquid in the LCD and cause it to ‘crack’, and on the other side of things extreme cold can cause it to freeze!
- Don't ever put anything pressing against your LCD screen in your camera bag, as it can crack the LCD screen (yes even if there is a window over it there is a chance it will break!)
- Don’t put your camera in your back pocket and then sit down!
- Don’t put your camera in your front pocket and then roll over on it.
- … Just don’t put your camera in your pants pocket please. =)
Ok, so it’s broken, what do you do now?
- The manufacturer will just site impact damage and will refuse the repair even if the camera wasn’t dropped etc. You can try, and I wish you luck, but they probably won’t fix it.
- Search for defective cameras on eBay and use one to repair yours and make one good camera out of them.
- Look for an actual camera repair business and not somebody that will send it to the manufacturer and tell you it’s $200 and 4-6 weeks to repair. (If they tell you this, they are NOT repairing your camera for you, they are sending it to the manufacturer, guaranteed)
Many LCD screens are very easy to install and you can do it yourself and all you need is a small screwdriver. Other LCD’s are very difficult to install, and even professionals don’t like to do them! While I can’t pick one brand …. is the best and Brand … is the worst, it’s really not like that. There are certain series of cameras that have one or two models that are more difficult to repair but the others are more straight forward. You will have to figure out if you want to try opening your camera and repairing it by yourself or not.
How is the LCD screen replaced?
With most Canon digital camera LCD screens for example (using them as the example because they have the largest market share) all you do is disconnect the ribbon cable for the LCD and the backlight (the light that shines through the LCD and allows you to see what is on the screen) and then install the new LCD. Some come with the backlight attached, some do not. Sometimes the LCD backlight will need soldering to the PCB of the camera or to the LCD ribbon cable, but most often it will not.
- Be careful to not touch the flash capacitor contacts! You WILL zap yourself if you do, and it will HURT a bit. You may end up tossing the camera half-way across the room when it happens to you. (Yeah, I’ve done it, I’ve been repairing cameras for 5 years now so….) We have 'flash capacitor dischargers' and use them every time we open a camera.
I hope this sheds some light on the subject of camera repair. You do not have to throw your camera away because the LCD is broken, and you can even fix it yourself!
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