I tried to repair my camera when it first broke. I knew it was a mechanical problem, not an electronic one. The retractable lens had stopped coming out. At first I took out all of the visible screws and still couldn't figure out how to get into it, so I put it back together. Then I tried again and realized that it has a tricky way of interlocking the front, back, top, together. That got me past the outer housing. I was really wary of breaking a cable, and there are two connecting the screen to the main unit. Of course, the main unit and screen were now no longer held together by the housing, and twisting them incorrectly could have snapped the cable. Plus getting into the main unit looked really daunting. So I put it back together again with some difficulty. It turns out that re-interlocking the major parts is harder than unlocking them.
Next I tried to find a repair shop, but the only camera place that could repair it was in Auckland, and the turn around time would have been too slow to bother. So by New Years I had given up on having a working camera while in New Zealand.
But after badly wishing I had it during my last camping trip, I decided to give another try at repairing it myself. So yesterday I sat down to it determined that I could at least take it completely apart without breaking it. Again I removed the housing, then took out the screws from the main unit. That fell apart into two pieces connected by a tiny cable, one of which was connected to the screen by two tiny cables. The other peice was the lens unit, which came apart after I took a few more screws out. I now had a tray of screws lined up in the order that they had come out. When I took apart the lens unit, a pile of beach sand spilled out. That was culprit! Once again I put it back together, but in the process managed to drop one of the tiny screws essential to the process.
Arg! A single screw the size of a grain of rice would mean I'd never get the camera back together. I had dropped it into a wilderness of carpet from off a desktop. It could have bounced anywhere. Note to self: don't repair a camera in a carpeted room. But I knew that it was certainly in the room somewhere. After 30 minutes of careful searching on hands and knees, I found the screw. I never did see it, but found it by feel. First I carefully searched my clothes, the removed the chair and desk from the area, then gridded off the carpet and ran my hands across it row by row.
I finally got the camera back together and turned it on, but the lens still didn't come out. I knew that I had made progress though by the sound. It sounded different - like something was whirring inside instead of jamming inside. Once again I took it apart and noticed that two little gears where misaligned. I fixed that, put it back together, turned it on and now the lens came out, but the screen was blank! I took it apart again and realized that somehow despite my care I had severed the cable connecting the screen to the main unit. Now I really despaired. After all that trouble, I had actually repaired the original problem only to be thwarted at the last minute by the mistake I had taken pains to avoid from the beginning.
But the cable didn't look snapped after all. The end was too clean. I figured that it had actually slid out of a port on the main unit. I could have slid it out from the beginning. Finally I slid the cable back into the port, reassembled the camera, turned it on and hallelujah! It works again! And here is the first thing I photographed:
The lesson here is that with extreme care, extreme patience, and extreme tenacity, you can fix most of life's problems.
I'm preparing to leave New Zealand in just a couple of days. Here's a last look at the places I've been and the new friends I've made who have hosted me in their homes (ordered chronologically):
