Repaire the Canon A640 digital camera which drop into deep water
Time: 18:40, 8-May-2010
Venue: TsingTai Stream, Hong Kong
My digital camera was drop into water when I enjoying the beautiful stream.
The DC submerges to the floor of the pool. Water enters all the corner of the camera includes the lens part.
After dinner, start to check the camera. There is still water inside the lens.
Loosen screws, open the cases and place the parts inside dry box.
The second day, take out the camera from the dry box.
Luckily, the camera can be turn on. But can see nothing from the LED display.
The lens is still wet. Place inside the dry box again.
6 hours passed. Try to power-on the camera again. It can shoot but the image is foggy.
2 hours more inside the dry box, the image is still very foggy.
Look at the deep of lens, there are still some small drops.
Can see more wet inside the aperture. Heat up the camera by hair-dryer.
It is better now, but it still can not shoot a clear photo.
Place inside dry box longer time. The camera seems OK now.
But the image quality is degraded.
Draw this figure to record the locations of screws.
10-May, 2010
I am disappointed at the image quality of the re-born camera.
The image is too soften and still foggy. Because the optical lens are too dirty after the water enter.
Finally, I disassembly the camera again and take the lens module out. It is hard and dangerous for this camera.
Some brittle parts have to be removing before the lens module out.
This is the CCD of A640. It looks beautiful.
This is the infrared filter which in front of the CCD.
This funny photo took without the infrared filter.
After clean up the CCD part, the image quality is still poor.
That I make decision to open the lens module for clean up.
This photo is showing all the parts of A640.
First, I have to solder the FCB away.
Open the lens module carefully.
This is the funny photo when the flashlight sparking on the lens and CCD.
Take out the entire lens and clean-up all the parts.
This is the aperture and shutter module.
It is a hard job to assemble the lens back. I use quite a long time. The critical points are the positions of gears.
Finally assembled the lens module. I link up 2AA batteries (3v) to the motor and driven the lens module for extension and retraction.
It uses to test whether the lens is correctly assembled.
The lens is clean now. Start to assemble the camera.
The image quality is much improved. It look as good as a new camera ^^
What a toughness camera, which used more than 3 years. It has been dropped several times.
By this camera, I took nearly 30,000 photos which precious for my memories.
Thanks for Canon to produce such a good camera.
After 5 hours of "operation", I forgot that I didn't have breakfast. It is the time for a tea ^^
Images and document by Tommy, copyright 2010
Email: tom@solarman.com