Water damage

I often see two opposite cases in lens repair: the optics are in perfect condition, but something prevents the lens from working (broken autofocus, falling apart enclosure, and so on), or - everything seems to work, but the optics are in a terrible state. Today - about the second case. The Sony FE 24-105mm G OSS lens was fully submerged in some body of water, dried out, and remained functional (the aperture, stabilizer and focus all still work), but with awful stains everywhere. I'm facing a complete disassembly, splitting lens groups, massive cleaning, despair and sorrow. Disclaimer: the result of this repair is not acceptable for a demanding user. A lens that has been in water and received irreparable lens damage requires either replacing all lenses with new ones, or a one-way ticket to the trash bin. However, within the principle of "better a slightly broken high-end piece of gear than nothing at all", such a repair is acceptable.

The title of this post can’t possibly capture the full extent of frustration that comes with repairing modern Canon cameras. We’ve got everything here: serious damage from minor water ingress, excessive reliance on proprietary ICs, and complete unavailability of component-level spare parts. Things are so bad that if you try to Google the part number of the faulty chip, you’ll find exactly this page, plus maybe one more - also from my own site. This Canon EOS R10 arrived with a straightforward backstory. It was bought for parts after "a little bit of water damage", with the idea of repairing and reselling it (not by me). However, the "simple repair" didn't pan out, and I received it with the diagnosis: "won't turn on" So let's disassemble it and dig deep into the circuitry of Canon's latest-generation mirrorless models.

The Canon 6D Mark II needs no introduction - an extremely popular full-frame camera for enthusiasts (in the past, at least). Somehow, I only got around to writing about its repair now - but better late than never. Today's patient arrived with the description: "dead as a dodo." I'm not quite sure what the owner meant by that, but the camera truly showed no signs of life. In this article: disassembly, interesting damage caused by an unknown liquid, and an unexpected culprit behind the failure.

I can accept "natural" damage without complaint. Water ate half the camera? Alright, it happens. A drop cracked the shell? Fair enough. But when some butterfingered “technician” makes things worse inside - I get furious. This camera arrived with the complaint: “the display doesn’t work, it reboots after language selection, and overall it’s not in great shape.” Turns out - even that was a lie. The camera was completely dead, zero reaction to the power lever.