Thursday, April 26, 2012

A broken LX3, resurrected by Francisco

No, I have not suddenly traveled to Spain to take photographs. The photographs above were taken by Francisco, who repaired his broken LX3 with parts from my broken LX3. Francisco's photographs from today are posted here with his permission. As you can see, the "recombined" LX3 works perfectly!

As I have written here previously, I mailed my broken LX3 to Francisco so that he might be able to repair his LX3.

Yesterday Francisco almost succeeded in the repairs, except that focusing didn't work properly. And today he fixed this problem as well.

Here is Francisco's story from yesterday, slightly edited for the posting:

I finally managed to make a mixture with both broken cameras and in the end got something half-working. Here's what I did:

  • Replaced my LX3's LCD screen with yours: mine had a crack since the camera fall from my hands and the display was not showing any image. -> OK
  • My LX3's lens didn't extend, so I was hoping to use yours, but when I tried to turn on your LX3 the lens got stuck. Anyway, I replaced the lens module as well. -> OK?

After these replacements, "our" repaired LX3 did turn on OK: lens extended correctly and display showed image. But, and here's the problem, pictures are always out of focus. I guess I did something wrong when replacing lenses, so I will have to open it again and take a second look at that, but it'll be tomorrow.

I could take some pictures of the process... only in the beginning. After a few shots I completely forgot to keep on taking pictures and when I realised it was too late and the new camera was already put together. Here are the pictures I took.

Below are three of the photographs in which Francisco documented a part of the repair process. (Taken with an old Nokia phone.)

And here is what happened today:

Great news, I could finally fix the LX3 completely! I don't know exactly what was the problem, but after removing the lens and placing it back again the out-of-focus problem dissapeared, so now it is a fully operational LX3 again thanks to your LX3.

I'm really happy about this. It is good that my LX3 was of use, and it is great that Francisco now has an LX3 that works. I admire his initiative in finding a way to repair the camera. I hope the recombined LX3 has a long career in producing fine photographs!

3 comments:

Francisco said...

If you are happy that your LX3 could be used to repair another LX3, you can imagine how happy I am to have my LX3 repaired thanks to your generosity!

Your LX3 gave a good and long service until it broke down(well over 200.000 shots!), and now it keeps on partly in service in my LX3.

I think it would have been a pity to discard my broken LX3 with only 7.000 shots, that's why I looked for a way to repair it and was lucky enough to find you.

Nowadays we tend to inmediately replace anything that breaks down without giving it a second chance of repairing, or even without being broken just because a new model appears, so it's good to have the LX3 in good condition again.

As I said by mail, beers are on my side whenever you come to take some pictures to Spain.

Best regards.

Anonymous said...

What a lovely, generous and creative story!

Juha Haataja said...

@Francisco: I feel a slight twinge of guilt because I didn't try to repair my LX3 when it was broken, but just went ahead and bought a LX5. But things turned out pretty well with the LX3!

@Anonymous: I think the world should note people like Francisco - but this kind of initiative doesn't make headlines in newspapers.