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 screen is broken or the lens is broken or stuck, so what do you do? You go back to there store where you bought it and the kid working there that knows next to nothing about cameras to begin with, let alone camera repair, tells you to throw it in the garbage and it’s not fixable. And so you feel the manufacturer is to blame for the problem, you throw away the camera and instead look to buy another made by a different company.

There are always alternatives to every problem including this one. Honest! It may cost you 0 to fix your camera, and yes you can buy a new camera these days for 0 at some places, but what sort of quality do you think you will get from a 0 camera? You shouldn’t expect high quality that’s for sure, because you won’t be getting it.

#1 – Cracked, broken, smashed LCD screen.

I found it difficult to decide between broken lenses and cracked LCD screen for #1, but I choose the LCD because it can be broken so easily that you can do it without even touching the camera!

The LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) is the view screen on the back of the camera that lets you see menus, playback pictures etc. An LCD screen is a very thin and fragile part of the camera and on many of them it is completely unprotected! Take a look at your LCD screen; is it slightly recessed or does it look like it’s flat and even all the way across? 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 leave your camera in your car in summer or winter. 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 ever put anything pressing against your LCD screen in your camera bag, as it can crack the LCD screen (yes even if there is a window over it there is a chance it will break!)

- Don’t put your camera in your back pocket and then sit down!

- Don’t put your camera in your front pocket and then roll over on it.

- … Please do not put your camera in your pants pocket. =)

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. There are LCD repairs that are quite difficult; even seasoned pro’s don’t want to do them! I can’t tell you 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. Sometimes the LCD backlight will need soldering to the PCB of the camera or to the LCD ribbon cable, but most often it will not.

- Be sure to never touch the flash capacitor contacts! You will shock yourself pretty good if you do it 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 have ‘flash capacitor dischargers’ and use them every time we open 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!