I took apart my Samsung TL34HD digital camera because in that location were splotches actualization on the pictures. Apparently dirt had gotten into the lens or onto the photo sensor. I liked the camera because information technology had a large viewing screen and 16 megapixels resolution, so information technology was like shooting fish in a barrel to make crisp well formatted pictures, merely it was showing its historic period so I bought a new Samsung ST700. This is also a fine camera, but I have some serious complaints with it. My kickoff complaint is that the viewing screen is functionally not about equally large every bit it would seem from the specs because quite a lot of its expanse gets consumed with "informative icons" and blank space. These things go far the style of viewing and composing a picture, and some of the icons are impossible to get rid of, just worst of all, from my perspective, is that under many lighting atmospheric condition it is impossible to run across where the edges of the photograph being exposed are located on the screen. I like to etch and preview my pictures right out to the edges, merely with this new camera that oft isn't possible. The older TL34HD functionally had nearly twice the apparent viewing area when taking a pic, and the epitome viewed was to the edge of the screen, and like shooting fish in a barrel to see. A super serious problem with my new camera is non a design flaw but a manufacturing flaw, which makes the upper correct corner of its photos go blurry when in wide bending mode. It is okay at heart to long range, but I now shoot quite a few pictures at wide angle. The upshot of this problem was that I wanted to return to using my erstwhile camera, but that required cleaning or replacing the lens. A new lens assembly was simply $45 so I got i, before trigger-happy apart the camera. And so of course the problems began.

The Samsung TL34HD comes apart with a single micro-phillips head screwdriver. Equally I took the camera apart I placed the tiny screws in a pattern representing the camera itself. That was a fault. I had cleared a table with two elbow desk-bound lamps, 1 on either side, so I would have plenty of infinite and proficient light. That as well was a error. I was using counter top for a work table so I could walk around easily, another mistake. At that place were lots of mistakes.

For starters, and I suspect that at that place'due south lots more things to do: make your piece of work area where yous can sit downwards at a tabular array – information technology gets really tiring doing tiny precision work while standing. Make your work desk white and smooth and bigger than you recollect you will need and with perpendicular edges raised around your work area. The tiny screws, and micro springs volition get dropped repeatedly, and then make it impossible for them to go away and get lost – make it impossible even for the tiny springs to vanish when they bound abroad because you are squeezing them into a tiny hole. A library report carrel would be a proficient work area, if it had really proficient lights.

Start by loosening all the screws a one-half plow, considering there is no sense taking out all the screws and having one become stuck. One time they are all loose, remove them in a specific order and identify these tiny screws on a piece of adhesive tape, so they stay put, in the social club you are removing them. As a rule if at that place are ten screws to take out there volition be five different sizes, and some of them will sort of fit in some other pigsty merely it ruins the threads, and so nothing will fit very well. Putting them on agglutinative tape keeps them from getting lost and too keeps them in order. If possible write down the location of each screw. It seems like a piddling matter, and it is, only if you go it wrong, which is very easy to do, you get yourself into a problem that may be impossible to recover from. Have pictures of your photographic camera as you disassemble it, if you take a second photographic camera.

Samsung_TL34HD

Samsung TL34HD partially disassembled, showing tools and a second lens assembly

Top left is the front end plate, and the bottom right is the back assembly with the cover screen. In the upper right are some screwdrivers and a close-up lens for viewing tiny parts and holes. The needle was slipped into tiny springs lengthways and then stuck into the pigsty where the springs belonged, where they were then pushed off the needle into the hole. The Phillips head screwdriver was stroked twenty times over a fridge-door magnet, which temporarily magnetized information technology, and that allowed me to bespeak the tiny screws into their holes easier. At the centre lesser is the old lens assembly seen from the back, the new ane is in the camera seen from the front end. At the lower left is the 2.0 GB data carte and the photographic camera'southward bombardment. The blackness diagonal object on the front end of the camera is the photograph flash storage capacitor; it has been lifted over from its normal position to our right side of the camera. The bright bluish object is a niggling flashlight, which was ofttimes used to encounter down into the recesses of the camera where some of the screws were all only invisible.

I am glad to have had the experience of taking this camera autonomously, and putting it back together. But, the camera didn't work because the miniscule electrical slip connectors no longer made skilful contact and the photographic camera didn't plough on. Only while cameras are still getting better by the year it is a better use of i's time and money to find a new one with better features. If I had viewed my new camera in a store showtime, I would take avoided getting i with also modest a viewing screen like my Samsung ST700. Strangely, on that issue, some of the biggest most expensive digital cameras have very pocket-sized viewing screens. Great lenses and crisper, more controllable sensors and capable of taking technically more controllable pictures, but:

I like to see exactly what I am getting, so I like having a big screen.