yesterday the camera broke

&uot

Yesterday the camera fell to the ground.  It was what seemed a rather insignificant event until the end to the day when i was writing this blog and uploading my pictures.  The images from the end of yesterday, as you can see from the blog are all out of focus and very bad images.  I inspected the camera and could see that the decorative plastic ring that went around the lens had dented.  This made me feel that the warranty was useless since it was from some sort of impact that the problems were created.  One could argue that a point and shoot camera that can't survive a fall to the floor from 5 feet up is a design flaw but i don't think the warrarnty cares much for that argument.

so the problem.

In the investigation as to what could have happened to the camera it became most apparent when you zoomed forward and the image was filled with this curve.  So either the lens or the sensor was knocked out of place.  The retracting of the lens when turned on and off was still working fine.  It opened and closed without an apparent problem no weird sounds that might indicate that the motor was working harder so that made me think that maybe the sensor had been knocked out of alignment.

Here is an image from when i was trying to figure out that something was wrong with the camera.

[ so cleary the images are messed up and i can't seem to move this one down to the bottome but this image is the comparison to the one at the bottome.  This image is after i put the camera back together]

So on realizing that if i wanted to use the camera i was going to have to fix it myself since the warrenty wouldn't apply and insurance was not implemented.  (I only got the camera two weeks ago).

So started to take the camera apart hoping i could find the thing that was out of alignment.  As it came apart it, of course got more and more complicated and my system for keeping track of the tiny screws quickly deterioted into a lot of tiny screws sitting on my desk.  So like the lighting project i was at a point of no return.  It seemed like i was heading towards nothing working.  By the end of the day i had figured out the sensor situation and that was not the problem so i had to go back to the lens but no adjustment to that part seemed to do anything.  So i needed to get past the sensor to the lens that sits right in front of the sensor.  The great thing about this small camera is that since it is so small the sensor has to move to the left when the camera compacts to its off position.  That means springs and more motors to move peices of plastic.  I had to get passed this moving plastic frame that held the senor to see into the lens mechanism.  More small screws were on the table.  There was some sort of glass peice that was between the sensor and the lens so i tried to grab this out but instead it fell out of site into the open lens area.  Nice!  So that was the end of that.  Turning the thing upside down didn't do anything to get this glass thing out.  So i left for the day thinking that the blog was over.............................................

Today i took out more screws and was able to see the lens that was on this side and the glass that had fallen in.   emptied out all the parts and then powere the camera back up to close the lens again.  The lens that was on this side seemed wonky so i tried to adjust it to see it anything would happen.  Somthing happened but i couldn't tell what.  So i thought when i have a chance i will try and close this thing back up.

Eventually after giveg up hope i closed the thing and i am left with five screws.  But then i turned it on  here is the picture i got......

So somehow after taking this thing apart i managed to get it back to together.  Beyond all odds.  Even Matt thought it was a lost cause and the camera was useless.  I wish i had a picture of the desk with this thing splayed out but alas the innards made it hard to use the sensor.

so again here was yesterday

 So back to taking pictures and doing the blog