Anablog

So I got assigned to do a teardown and, as usual, went overboard and took 30 pictures of the guts of one of my Dimage X50 cameras. The article and the slideshow are posted here. Let me know if you folks like these detailed teardowns, they are a ton of work, not just for me but for Matt Miller, our web Chief Editor. Unlike a lot of teardowns in other publications, I am not that concerned with who makes the chips used in the camera as opposed to all the design tradeoffs and techniques used in the product. This was a fun job since I had the camera for over a year before the darn latch button broke the LCD screen. Needless to say, I could find no source for the screen anywhere, another serviceability rant to go with the last couple I just posted. But as always, eBay came to the rescue. This camera was about 300 bucks new, but I snagged several of them on eBay for 24 to 64 dollars. The cheapest one was really broken. It would not focus. I took the LCD out of that one for my present camera. One of the others just had the battery door missing, I had yet another older X50 with yet another broken LCD, so I took the door from that unit and now the eBay camera works fine. The 64-dollar camera was said to work fine and it did. All of them came with manuals and chargers and batteries and one even had a 512k SD card. Yeah eBay. So I got pretty good at taking them apart and putting them together. It helps to have so many that you don’t really care if you ruin something; you know there will be spare parts.

As I said in the print article, this camera is way better than the X60 since it has a viewfinder. When the LCD broke I still could use the camera for a month until I got the eBay units. I even hooked it to my LCD TV with the supplied cable so I could change settings despite the broken LCD. Now I have 5 working cameras. I gave one to a friend, and have three good ones and the old one with the broken LCD. And lets not forget camera 6, the one in a zip-lock back in a hundred pieces. This camera is a small camera with 3x optical zoom so it is something I can carry around and have ready at a moment’s notice. It also will take movies for an hour with a 1 gig SD card in it so I like it for that as well. I really love that there is a big slide over the lens so when you slide it open—whack—the camera is on. Slide it closed and the camera is off. No poking little tiny Japanese buttons, hoping you have held it down long enough for the microprocessor to poll the button, but no so long that it polls it twice so it turns off right after it powers up. Who designs the UI for these things anyway, the Marquis de Sade?

Here is the camera case that broke the screen. The slot in the top cover means the LCD is intended to be on the side of the latch, and t e goofy magnetic latch is what cracked the screen. Idiots, they let an 8 dollar accessory ruin a 300 dollar camera. And the case is a factory Minolta case. (Click to enlarge.)

Of course the belt clip on the rear broke off a week after I got the case. Don’t consumer electronic companies know they are judged by their accessories even more than the product itself? (Click to enlarge.)

This is the right way to store two extra batteries. There is just enough room in the case to slide them down next to the camera. If you put them in the pouch you will crack the LCD screen for sure, like I did with the first Dimage X50 I broke. To fix the latch cracking the screen, go to Orchard Supply Hardware and buy the thickest piece of sheet metal you can find, cut it to fit the pouch and slip it in to protect the LCD. This is what Konica Minolta should have done. (Click to enlarge.)