Orion's Photos: portrait - mechanical - sony_p8_camera
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This is my wife Layla's Sony P8 digital camera.
It's about 3 years old, and the lens abruptly stopped moving
in and out--instead, when you turn the camera on, it just emits
a worrisome buzzing noise.
So I cracked the case, and tore the thing down. I could easily
wind the lens in and out manually after removing the motor and
gearbox, but the gearbox wouldn't spin at all.
As it turns out, there were a few tiny grains of sand lodged in the
tiny plastic gears that convert a super-high-RPM tiny motor into the
slow but powerful push needed to move the lens. So a little alchol,
a cotton swab, and a few toothpicks were enough to get the camera
working again!
Having *two* digital cameras is nice, because you can take pictures of
the guts of the broken one with the working one. Taking pictures is
really a good way to figure out how to reassemble the dozens of tiny screws
and puny wires...
The moral of the story: don't get sand in your digital camera!
My wife often carried the camera in the same pocket she also uses
to pick up pretty rocks; the pocket often is a bit sandy. It doesn't
take much to jam up a 3mm nylon gear!
All images taken by Orion Lawlor
and placed completely in the public domain.
Converted to HTML on Wed Aug 31 22:49:30 AKDT 2011.
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