How to save 10 times on the repair of photographic equipment | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Soon­er or lat­er, all pho­tog­ra­phers are faced with equip­ment mal­func­tions. Nei­ther cam­eras nor lens­es last for­ev­er. Even with the most care­ful, but inten­sive use, the need for repair or main­te­nance occurs reg­u­lar­ly. How­ev­er, folk wis­dom rush­es to the aid of a brave spir­it, sup­ply­ing them with recipes from “how to clean” to “how to dis­as­sem­ble.”

Some­how I put a “slim” polar­iz­er on the TV set through an adapter ring and could not twist it. The sit­u­a­tion is not crit­i­cal, but pleas­ant enough. Hav­ing exhaust­ed his patience and inge­nu­ity, he turned to the Inter­net. I found a page with a dozen ways to twist “sticky” fil­ters. The most humane of them had an effect, for which I was unspeak­ably glad. Inspired by the expe­ri­ence gained, he told a friend about it to a pho­to equip­ment repair­man, and offered to col­lect the “good advice” known to him into a use­ful arti­cle. In response, he spoke about why such advice often goes side­ways to the read­er.

My friend has been res­ur­rect­ing and adjust­ing pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment for 14 years. They turn to him with any prob­lems — from clean­ing the matrix and jam­ming but­tons to torn mounts and bro­ken lens­es. I set­tled down seri­ous­ly — a sep­a­rate room, dust fil­tra­tion, a moun­tain of equip­ment on the shelves (includ­ing a micro­scope, a com­pres­sor, a drill and an adjust­ment stand). He approach­es the repair respon­si­bly and care­ful­ly, pay­ing atten­tion to every lit­tle thing. Instruc­tions from the Inter­net are con­sid­ered a dis­ser­vice.

Start­ed with my exam­ple. Indeed, in order to twist a “sticky” fil­ter, it is pos­si­ble to increase the con­tact area with addi­tion­al fil­ters of the same diam­e­ter and cor­rect­ly dis­trib­ute the force over the frame. But it also mat­ters which part to hold the lens for. My 70–200 is lucky. But if you take the EF 35mm f/1.4L USM by the body and start twist­ing, the out­er shell will tear off the mounts and, turn­ing, will turn the insides into mince­meat.

It turned out that “good advice” helps peo­ple in a huge num­ber of sit­u­a­tions.

After the fall of the EF 50mm F / 1.4, aut­o­fo­cus wedges? It does­n’t mat­ter, you need to dis­as­sem­ble it, remove the bar­rel (heli­coid) and “knock with a mal­let”, help­ing the process with a tooth­brush. In addi­tion to the bar­bar­ic rec­om­men­da­tions for straight­en­ing a very accu­rate detail, the author of the instruc­tions did not men­tion the care­ful dis­abling of the dis­tance sen­sor and oth­er nuances. Even if, with the help of impro­vised means, you man­age not to spoil the bar­rel, but to return it to the shape of a cylin­der, there is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty of aut­o­fo­cus fail­ure.

Hav­ing a prob­lem with the Tam­ron 17–50? A kind per­son, using the tri­al and error method, described in detail and step by step how to dis­as­sem­ble it into two dozen com­po­nents. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the author unscrewed a few more screws than actu­al­ly required. Dur­ing assem­bly, the adjust­ment of the opti­cal cir­cuit will be vio­lat­ed. The removed front and rear lens­es were adjust­ed, and it is not pos­si­ble to adjust ade­quate sharp­ness with­out spe­cial equip­ment. At the very end of the arti­cle, a per­son iron­i­cal­ly says that after assem­bly the lens can be thrown away, since part of the image is a “ter­ri­ble thought”. It is close to the truth and per­haps it was worth writ­ing this rev­e­la­tion at the very begin­ning of the text.

Did the lamp in the flash serve its pur­pose? In this case, you can order a part on eBay and find harsh men’s rec­om­men­da­tions: “The flash body is dis­as­sem­bled in the same way as any oth­er tech­nique. The capac­i­tor is dis­charged even with pli­ers, but bet­ter through a resis­tor (10+ kOhm)”. The real­i­ty is some­what harsh­er — dis­charg­ing with pli­ers will leave car­bon deposits on the board and most like­ly dis­able the flash pow­er con­trol and oth­er boards. The volt­age stored in the capac­i­tor for a long time is a decent 300 V, and under unfor­tu­nate cir­cum­stances, it can ruin not only elec­tron­ics, but also health.

“Pho­totech­nics is pre­ci­sion mechan­ics, pre­ci­sion optics and pre­ci­sion elec­tron­ics. Its repair requires con­di­tions, spe­cial tools and skills. In the motor of a car, for exam­ple, not every­one will climb to poke around. But they climb into the lens­es.”- com­ments the mas­ter.

Do not assume that the Inter­net is to blame. The spir­it of adven­tur­ism, curios­i­ty and the desire to save mon­ey are not alien to the own­ers of expen­sive equip­ment. The com­bi­na­tion of these qual­i­ties and the pres­ence of sev­er­al small Phillips screw­drivers allows you to add work and com­plex­i­ty to cam­era repair shops in a mat­ter of min­utes.

So, for exam­ple, when focus­ing on the EF 70–200mm F / 2.8L did not work cor­rect­ly, the per­son was not at a loss and began to dis­as­sem­ble it him­self. Hav­ing unscrewed the switch pad, he suc­cess­ful­ly cut off the cable. Hand­ed over the dam­aged lens to an incom­pe­tent crafts­man. As a result, dur­ing dis­as­sem­bly, the moth­er­board and the diaphragm unit were dam­aged. Ini­tial­ly, only the cor­rect dis­as­sem­bly and instal­la­tion of the dropped cable were required, which would have cost 3 thou­sand rubles. Repair after inter­ven­tions cost 38 thou­sand.

In anoth­er case, the back of the bay­o­net at the Sig­ma 24–70 came off. Fas­ten­ing the parts with super­glue, the own­er ruined the con­tact pad and the moth­er­board, break­ing off the diaphragm block cable along the way. Instead of 5 thou­sand repairs got up at 25.

Super­glue is a good helper in every­day life. But not in elec­tron­ics repair, even cos­met­ic. The own­er of Nikon, tired of falling off rub­ber bands, solved the prob­lem with super­glue, at the same time seal­ing all the screws tight­ly. When dis­as­sem­bling the cam­era, the mas­ter had to cut off the rub­ber bands with a scalpel and drill out the screws. For ten thou­sand, which cost main­te­nance, you could buy two sets of new rub­ber.

“Based on prac­tice, I can say that inde­pen­dent inter­ven­tion leads to an increase in the cost of repairs from five to fif­teen times.”- the mas­ter con­tin­ues the sto­ry.

A ref­er­ence exam­ple of unskilled inter­fer­ence. “A guy brought me a 5D mark II. He says it’s bug­gy. When dis­as­sem­bling, I saw that a cer­tain mas­ter sol­dered the legs of the con­tact group of the mem­o­ry card slot with a sol­der­ing iron not intend­ed for pre­cise work. It looked scary — sol­der spots, soot. Appar­ent­ly, some­thing went wrong with him in the process, dam­aged the moth­er­board, the pro­tec­tion of the pow­er board. Dis­abled the dis­play and cables that switch the con­trols on the back cov­er. As a result, all the list­ed ele­ments were sub­ject to replace­ment. Even despite the fact that some of the spare parts were tak­en from the donor for free, the repair cost 33 thou­sand. And ini­tial­ly it was only nec­es­sary to cor­rect­ly sol­der a cou­ple of legs, it costs 3 thou­sand rubles.» The mas­ter has dozens of sim­i­lar sto­ries, just make sure to write them down.

“In order to repair com­plex equip­ment, you need spe­cial equip­ment. Good, accu­rate tool. Anti­sta­t­ic work­place. There is even a spe­cial chair, with an anti­sta­t­ic icon. Knowl­edge and under­stand­ing of dis­as­sem­bly and assem­bly pro­ce­dures is required.

The only rea­son­able way to save on the repair of pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment is not to try to fig­ure it out your­self, but to take the faulty equip­ment to a good spe­cial­ist.»

Short address of the mate­r­i­al: fotosklad.ru/ADVICE.