REPAIRING A CANON SD600 DIGITAL CAMERA

"I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn." - Pablo Picasso

Not so fast Pablo! I find having a small digital camera on board to be very useful. Not only for the usual personal photos, blogging or capturing those strange moments on the water that some will never believe without some kind of proof. But, I also found a camera useful for repairs and maintenance which I'll get into on a future post. While these new digital cameras are great pieces of technology they can also fail. Since I just recently found my Canon Powershot camera (after much searching) on board where it was hiding from me. I thought I would post about two of the repairs I have made to the said camera which others my find helpful in case the camera goes on the fritz somewhere in your journeys.

LCD REPLACEMENT
One day during the conversion to electric power. I was squeezing through one of the cockpit hatches and heard something crack. The SD600 that I had in my shirt pocket now had a cracked LCD screen and was useless. Not wanting to just throw it away I did a search on the Internet and found a site that explains how to replace the LCD screen on the SD600 and other Canon cameras. Of course you could also send it back to Canon and they will fix it for $. But, if you are handy, careful and have a set of small precision screwdrivers you can replace it yourself for about 40 bucks. You can see the steps with excellent photos by clicking here. NOTE: That there are two types of screens available make sure which one you have before ordering the part from Canon. It is explained on the site how to identify which screen your camera has. The second problem I had was:

THE CAMERA WILL NOT TURN ON
A few month's after replacing the screen I dropped the camera rather hard. All of a sudden it would no longer turn on. I thought that's it. I was trying to decide whether to send it back to Canon for repair ($100) or get a new camera. In the end I bought another camera. But, in my spare time I decided to take another look and see if I could not fix the turn on problem. I did. The problem was on the inside of the Memory Card Slot/Battery Cover.

There is a little plastic protrusion that contacts a tiny little switch that tells the circuitry in the camera that the battery door is closed.

Apparently part of the plastic tip broke off and so it was not contacting the switch and letting the camera turn on.

All of these parts are delicate. So how do I fix this? I needed some thing to put a little pressure on the switch but, not too much or I would end up breaking the switch too. I found just what I needed by using a medium sized rubber band. I cut a small piece of the rubber band and laid it across the switch. When I closed the battery door the camera came to life. The rubber band allows the remaining tip on the battery door to provide enough pressure to close the switch.
I hope the above information helps when you have a digital camera failure if not remember this:

"There will be times when you will be in the field without a camera. And, you will see the most glorious sunset or the most beautiful scene that you have ever witnessed. Don't be bitter because you can't record it. Sit down, drink it in, and enjoy it for what it is!" ~DeGriff