In March 2007, my daughter Yana went to the beach with my Canon
20D camera, which I had given to her on effectively permanent loan. It got hit by a wave,
and the insurance determined that it was a write-off, giving her a new 30D in exchange. But
I wasn't happy with just writing it off, so I played around with it a bit. The summary?
It's a write-off. Here are the relevant entries from my diary of the time. Follow the Images links for many
more photos, all taken with a compact Nikon
“Coolpix” L1.
Spent some time today looking at the Canon EOS 20D that Yana brought
back with her. She had subjected it to sand and water on the beach a few weeks ago, and the
camera shop had declared it to not be repairable. But it almost worked. Took it apart and
found that the damage was, indeed, relatively minor:
So why doesn't it work reliably? My best bet is that the control knobs have got wet and no
longer work reliably. But they're probably just switches. I'll leave it to dry out and then
put it back together.
Put the Canon camera together and was able to take a few photos before it stopped responding
again. It was becoming fairly clear that water must have got in the front somewhere, so
found a way to take the front off—in fact, the camera is quite nicely put
together—and discovered some more serious damage, including a miniscule resistor that
had been corroded off altogether:
In the first photo, the resistor (marked “753” is visible below the solder
joint with the pink wire. It was loose, though, and in the following photo (rotated by 90°)
it's missing. The third photo shows how tiny it is. I can't think of any way to fix that;
hopefully it won't make too much difference. Otherwise I suppose the camera really is a
write-off.
There's a positive side to documenting my problems in this diary. Today I got a message
from Thomas Maynard referring to the missing resistor on my Canon EOS 20D:
You can do SMT (Surface Mount Technology) soldering at home at your workbench.
Here is a link to an introductory
SMT kit. I bring it to your attention not for its applicability to your camera issues but
for the accompanying
PDF manual that describes clearly and concisely what you need and how to perform SMT
assembly at home.
Unfortunately, this particular kit looks simple in comparison with the problem I'm up
against: firstly, the resistors in question are much larger, and secondly they're on an
epoxy circuit board. In my case, the substrate is plastic ribbon:
Finally got round to putting the Canon camera back together today. I'm a little dubious
about some of the connectors. They're tiny, and the alignment seems very critical. In
particular, in the second photo below, it looks as if the holes in the tape should line up
with the black clips below; but they don't. I tried quite hard to line them up, but that
seemed to be the only way they would fit.
As a result of the lost resistor, I was expecting some loss of functionality, but it turned
out to be complete: when I turned it on, the camera did nothing. If I hadn't got an
electrical shock from one of the side connectors (flash? I wasn't expecting anything like
that), I would have suspected that the battery no longer worked. That's disappointing.
Taking close-up photos of the components has unexpected advantages, though. On looking at
one, a fair amount of residual corrosion can be seen:
There's a question, of course, as to whether this is corrosion or reflection, but at any
rate it's clear that it needs cleaning. It's also interesting to note the indentations from
the pins of the connector. I wonder if cleaning would help.
