#1 Thing That Will Break On Your Digital Camera? LCD Screen!
It’s a simple fact that we live in a throw-away society. 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 LCD is cracked, or the lens is jammed; 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? Not very good quality I hope, because you’re not going to get it.
#1 – Broken/cracked 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!
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 expose your camera to high heat or extreme cold in your car. 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 put anything up against the LCD in your camera bag, it will bang against the LCD and crack it (yes, even if it has a window over it, it will break!)
- Don’t put your camera in your back pocket and then sit down!
- Don’t store your camera in your pants pocket, it can easily break from the pressure.
- … Just avoid putting the camera in your pants pocket completely. =)
Ok, so it’s broken, what do you do now?
- Manufacturers usually cite impact damage as the cause of the breakage and will not repair the camera under warranty. You can try, and I wish you luck, but they probably won’t fix it.
- Look for a defective camera on eBay and make one good camera from the two if you are handy.
- 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 an LCD 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 LCDs do come with the backlight that shines through it attached and others do not. Some backlights need to be soldered to the mainboard of the camera, some do 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 use an item called a “flash capacitor discharger” and we use them every time we work on a camera.
I hope this sheds some light on the subject of camera repair. There’s no need to toss out your camera just because the LCD screen is broken, in fact you might be able to fix it yourself!
