Introduction

The inside story of a compact digital camera from sony. This one belong to a friend of mine, and is actually broken, the shutter button broke.

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    • This is the Sony DSC-H2 we are going to tear down.

    • It's a 6.0mpix, 12x optical zoom compact digital camera.

    • It served well to the point at which the shutter button fell off.

    • To tear it apart, we need a #0 Philips screwdriver only, thats very nice of you, Sony!

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    • Almost all cameras have a high voltage circuit and capacitor to power the flash.

    • Before you disassemble any camera, remove the batteries and wait a full day to make sure the capacitor is discharged

    • Never use bare fingers or tools with metal handles near a high voltage capacitor which you are not certain its discharged!

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    • For safety reasons, find a screwdriver that has a plastic, wooden or other non-conducting handle

    • The second photo shows a spark and a plasma cloud created by rapidly discharging a capacitor similar to the one in this camera. (the picture was taken at the technical university of Łódź, Poland, do not try this at home!)

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    • Now, let's start the ceremony!

    • Remove the two screws at the bottom.

    • The two on the right side.

    • And the one on the left side

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    • There is one more screw at the right side of the flash lamp

    • These 5 screws are identical, and unique to the outer shell of the camera.

    • We may now remove the back shell, revealing the LCD and rear control panel

    • The body is thick and looks durable

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    • Remove the two philips screws, and the two ribbons.

    • The button panel and the LCD is now free.

    • The camera has a 2.0", 85,000 dot LCD

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    • Under the LCD, we find a metal screen protecting the logic board.

    • Carefully unlock it at the top and left side

    • We're in

    • Remove all the ribbon cables. There sure is a lot of them.

    • Some of the ribbon cables have "Halogen free" singed on them. That's nice, but we are still not throwing the camera away, not just yet.

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    • These two screws hold the logic board.

    • When removing the board, be careful about some remaining ribbon cables.

    • The board is out!

    • On one side we see the AD80080A chip from Analog devices responsible for capturing the analog signal from the CCD

    • On the other side, we see the Sony "Real Imaging Processor" that converts raw photo data into nice and human-viewable .jpg files.

    • The analog cable connecting the CCD to the logic board is screened with some pieces of metal to reduce noise.

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    • Under the logic board there is this piece of plastic, separating the lens and sensor from the rest of the camera.

    • It comes right out, no screws or whatsoever.

    • Detach the electronic viewfinder atop.

    • The plastic locks hold the lens and screen of the electronic viewfinder together.

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    • The viewfinder screen is sooooo smallll!

    • It has 200.000 dots, and about 30mm2 of area

    • That is some insane pixel density, look what happens when the optics used to view this display are pressed against a typical laptop display - you can see the sub-pixels!

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    • The next two screws hold the lens and sensor module

    • It's out, and it's huge.

    • You can even make it bigger, apply 3 volts to the marked terminals to extend the lens.

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    • Remove these two screws to detach the sensor from the lens

    • The sensor has a typical 1/2.5" size. That's not a big sensor.

    • Here you have a 5 polish zloty coin for comparison.

    • 5 polish zloty's is about $1.80, in case you don't grasp the size yet :)

    • The CCD is very shinny.

    • 6 megapixels from a 1 / 2.5" sensor is like expecting 70 megapixels from a 35mm film camera. It's still better then pumping 12 megapixels out of a pinhead sized sensor in mobile phones.

    • Manufacturers, please stop the megapixel war. Thank you.

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    • The Carl Zeiss lens from the sony camera alongside the lens from a Zorki-6 soviet compact rangefinder from 1960.

    • Unlike the Sony, the Zorka still works, despite being over 40 years older.

    • The back of the Zeiss has significantly more electronics, ribbon cables and servomechanisms than the Zorka lens

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    • Lets get back to the body of the camera

    • Lift this plastic lock to remove the hight voltage chip powering the speed light.

    • 3 cables connect this board with the lamp and they are soldered.

    • The capacitor has 320 micro farads of capacity and operates at 330 volts. That's 17.4 joules of potential electric energy, quite much for a speed light.

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    • To get to the microphone and top button panel, unscrew these three.

    • Sony made sure that the microphone caches the sound you want, and not internal motor noise, or the sound of the wind. This is actually very impressive work, most camera manufactures don't care that much.

    • Finally the button panel, with the broken shutter button.

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    • That's it. One Sony DSC-H2 in parts. Thanks for reading.

    Is there any kind of dust seal or way of preventing dust entering between the lens barrel tubes as they rub up against each other when zooming in ?

    miele -

    What a great tear down description of the Sony H5. I read many comments about a constant motor noise from the H5. Mine has that same problem and it runs down the batteries in a very short time. Didn't used to make that noise and the batteries had a good life, so something has changed. I have tried every setting option and changed batteries many times with no success. I like the H5, it does everything I need, but would sure like to know why it makes that constant motor noise.

    danderso34 -

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Member since: 14/10/09

296 Reputation

7 comments

Excellent teardown! Great job!

Walter Galan -

Do you have a Sony Cybershot DSC-H2 camera? Did your shutter button just POP OFF? Are you mad that your $400 Cybershot is now useless due to their design flaw?

Well jump on in! We're gonna do something about it. http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/SonyCla...

Steve Guzman -

Awesome tear-down, saved me $150 bucks and my camera is back!. We love this camera and are so happy to have it working again.

Jason Brown -

I actually went beyond this point and dismantled the lens. Something had come apart inside and it no longer worked. It didn't even retract when I turned off the camera. Can anyone help me with instructions to put it back together? I can't work it out. I figured that the cost to get it repaired would have been more than the camera is now worth, so no harm in trying!!!

Thanks.

Ronald -

My DSC-H2 is not picking up any video It does everything else except I cant see a picture. Much like the Lens coveris left on. Since I see this teardown, what should I look for to correct this?

Denfield McNab -

Thanks for your efforts putting this together. Excellent demonstration. I used it to get into my similar Sony DCS-HX200V. Had a problem in cold weather where it kept switching from photo to video mode on its own. Probably some lingering moisture inside the electronics. We live in Florida USA so there is always a large humidity and temperature variation between indoors and outdoors. We also use the camera in a lot of near-water situations, so it has gotten splashed a few times. I checked to see if anything was dirty, but didn't dig in as deep as you did. I may just need to store it in a bag of rice for a few weeks. Thanks again.

boobania -

камера откровенно дерьмовая, если не считать относительно резкий и светлый объектив от цейсс. однако же кнопка, - у всей линейки н2 - н50 и дальше, - ломается часто, примерно через месяц - год после начала работы камерой.

замечу, что равная камере сони н2 по качеству оптики мини-камера пентакс а30, если сравнивать только качество фотографий и долговечность камер, обладает исключительно надёжным спусковым механизмом, который работает безупречно. у меня, к примеру, обе названные камеры в наличии с 2006 года. исправна только пентакс а30. некогда эта крохотулечка настолько мне понравилась, что я спустя месяц приобрёл вторую, а через год еще и третью. себе, дочке и жене. все очень довольны и по сей день. я беру с собой а30 во все поездки, походы, включая аптеки, магазины, поликлиники, - например, сфоткать инструкцию нового лекарства, расцветку обоев.

akbig -