Canon A550/A560 Lens Assembly Repair

Now for the lens assembly repair. First of all, unhook the spring from here:

Next, you have to dislodge the main flexible cable assembly. For this, you'll have to remove the tape (red arrow). Then slightly push up the flexible cable assembly (blue arrow). This is held down with some sort of sticky glue. You should be careful, and it will come off easily. Then, slightly push from under using a watch flat screwdriver (yellow arrow) to make this part of assembly come. It is held down by plastic tabs (visible in the pic). Next, the assembly will have to be taken out from under the plastic tab (grey arrow). Since the cable is flexible, you should be able to do that very easily:

Tape off:

And cable assembly removed from under the plastic tab:

Next, take off the five screws:

And slightly push the tab slightly, to make it come off:

Only the slightest wiggling will make the top and bottom part separate. They're still connected through the cable assembly, so don't try to take the two halves apart:

This exposes the problem. Broken gears in the gearbox:

This is not a difficult fix. This pair of gears is available on ebay for $12.50, including shipping. Seems like in this case at least, the root cause was dropping the camera, and not sand from the beach, as I'd initially thought, though the sand particles are still there.

The lens assembly can further be taken out to clean up the dust and sand particles etc.:

Now to bust an urban myth. The camera with a stuck lens does not repair itself by blowing air through it by using a compressor, or thumping it, or throwing it against the wall. In this case, severe thumping/ buggering has resulted in not just the tabs on lens cover to be broken (red arrows):

but also in other cosmetic blemishes from the "thumping":

Right now, I don't have an incentive to order these gears and repair the lens assembly, since I've already used the parts from this camera to repair the other one, but next time, I know what to do if I come across a camera which lens issues.

Pentax 50mm lens fix

I acquired an SMCA 50mm f1.7 from eBay. Well, what do you expect.. The aperture ring was would only turn between f1.7 and f11. Meaning no A position action for my DS. So I did a bit of reading round the net and found that this seems to be a problem peculiar to this one specific Pentax lens. I need very little encouragement to take things to bits, so I went for it, and here are my observations.

First, unscrew the five screws securing the bayonet mount.

Take it off, and it looks like this

The aperture lever cam just lifts off, like this.

Next, the tricky bit. You have to take the aperture ring off, VERY CAREFULLY. It is worth doing this in a box or perhaps a plastic bag, because there are a couple of tiny bits that could fly off and get lost. If you happen to have one of those handy magnetised parts trays (available from all good automotive tool supply shops), so much the better. Once the ring is eased off, and all the bits are accounted for, relax. But not totally. You may have one or more minute ball bearings rolling around. They are teeny tiny. Keep good track of them and BEWARE, they are soo small that if you brush against one accidentally, you can pick one up on your skin without realising it - until it is too late and you've lost it. Best advice - pick them up with a bit of Sellotape until you are ready to put it all back together. The A position button will probably fall out of the aperture ring, but it's large by comparison and hard to lose.

Now it looks like this. Note that little silver bullet-on-a-spring thingy. That's the 'A' connector, as it were, that tells the camera when the lens is in A mode. Most likely it fell off when the aperture ring came off. The bullet thingy sits on a metal tab in that grove. The bullet thing disassembles into three bits; the bullet, the spring and the carrier. If yours drops off and falls to bits, just press the bullet bit back into the carrier and shove the spring back up its arse and, come reassembly time, put the metal tab back in the grove and sit the bullet thingy assembly back on it.

Now to the main event. There are two metal tangs controlling the A position clickstop. These are held in place with plastic welds. These welds are a bit fragile and commonly fail. It seems that Pentax only used this fixing on this one specific lens, but I haven't looked inside any others to check. Yet. So there's the problem - the weld has failed on one tang and it has become detached, jamming the ring.

Solution: I have read that some people have drilled tiny holes and reaffixed the tangs with tiny screws. Far too much effort for me. I just used a blob of Araldite adhesive, which seems to have done the job perfectly. Perhaps you could lash it down with duct tape. There there, all better. Original plastic weld on the right, Araldite blob on the left.

Now to stick it all back together. Remember the detent - here's the spring, pulled a bit out of its hole so you can see it.

And there you have it. It's not brain surgery, just a bit fiddly. I do hope you didn't lose any of those ball bearings now...

This is how I fixed my Canon SD600 with Lens Error.

Out of the blue my Canon SD600 showed "Lens Error" after I turned it on. The lens was normally retracted and didn't even seem to try to come out. Even if switched to "play" mode it showed Lens Error and didn't get to the menu.

I went online and noticed this is a BIG problem for many people with Canon's. One option offered was to push the lens back in - but since the lens is fully retracted in my (and many other cases) that is not an option. Another option mentioned was to tap the camera on a hard surface. That didn't work either.

Since the Camera is out of warranty (just 2 weeks!) I decided to open it and see what I could do.

It turns out I could fix it!!!

The problem seems that miniscule dust/sand particles jam the gears which moves the lens. It is possible to turn the lens motor by hand bit by bit and remove particles stuck in the gear.

I will explain in detail below, including pictures. Note: these photo's were made with my 2002 Konica KD-400Z - still working great, while this is the 2nd (and last) Canon.

Step 1: Remove all 6 screws with a miniature philips screwdriver (2 bottom, 2 left, 2 right). They are all the same size screws.

Carefully remove front cover, then the back cover. This is what you will see:

The lens motor is located behind the flash. With a miniature screw driver it is possible to push this rotor around bit by bit. It takes some time and precision, but you can very slowly see the lens coming out. The rotor must be rotated towards the back of the camera for the lens to open. In other words: the axle should be rotated clockwise.

When I switched the camera on after a few revolutions, it actually worked again! Problem solved!

However, I wanted to remove the root cause of the problem. I could hear the gear didn't go very smooth, little "ticks" could be heard. It seems small pieces of sand and dust were jamming the lens gear. The lens gear (well, at least 2 gears) can be seen on the side of the camera - see picture below:

I used the smallest screw driver and a needle pin to pick out particles of sand/dust which were stuck between the gear. They are easy to see on the black gear, but they were also present on the white gear. I worked the entire gear by pushing the motor rotor bit by bit with the miniature screw driver. I continued until I removed all particles. This took me 10-15 minutes.

Warning: Don't touch the Flash - the capacitor is charged with 20 kV or so - it will give you quite a shock.

After this the lens opening and closing went smooth - without odd noises or ticking.

I inspected the inside of the camera, and noticed more sand/dust particles were present. I cleaned it all up, to avoid them from jamming the gear again. There was a lot of sand stuck in the speaker (round black circle on the back) and a LOT of sand was stuck on the rectangular rubber seal on the inside cover. See picture:

I think the Canon's suffer from these lens problems because sand/dust can enter the camera - especially if they are put in your pockets. Canon should have sealed the gears so sand/dust can not enter. Maybe it's a strategy, maybe they don't like the camera's last too long or like to earn a buck on repairing them.

After fixing it and cleaning everything, the camera can be closed again. Start with the back cover. Pay close attention to make sure the mode switch slider (play, movie, camera) is catching the switch lever correctly. After placing the back cover, but before putting in any screws check if the mode switch can be operated normally.

Then carefully place the front cover and position the piece of plastic for the carry-cord. Fasten the 6 screws.

I hope this information helped you fix your Canon.

Kind Regards, Arnoud.