Fuji Finepix F31FD lens damage.

Gutted! My camera tilted forward off its mini tripod and landed on the
lens. It only fell about 2 inches but the lens has been pushed in on
one side:

http://asktoby.is-a-geek.com/~toby/F...ens_damage.jpg

I see five options he

- Try to pull out the lens, hard*, to make it straight.
- Try to push the lens in on the opposite side, hard*, to make it
straight.
- Take it to be repaired (£?).
- Sell it on ebay as "damaged" and put money towards replacement F31FD
(£150).
- Sell it on ebay as "damaged" and put money towards alternative
replacement camera.

Any opinions?

*I've had a bit of a push/pull at it, nothing too rough yet - I don't
want to make it worse! Does anyone know how these operate inside? My
guess is that there is some threaded plastic which may have jumped one
'turn' over - with a bit of force I might be able to snap it back.

--
-Toby
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject to circumvent my email filters.

A few years ago I bought a Fuji 2400Z (I still have it). I dropped it
onto a concrete floor and the result looked identical to yours. At the
time I figured that I had little to lose so I just grabbed the lens
and pulled it straight. It made a noise , much as you supposed, like
plastic threads clicking over each other.

That was at least 4 , maybe 6 , years ago. The camera still works 100%
- except for the crappy batteries. The lens retracts , zooms, focuses
etc etc. with no problems at all.

Good luck!

On 2009-08-09, Avery Avery@home wrote:
A few years ago I bought a Fuji 2400Z (I still have it). I dropped it
onto a concrete floor and the result looked identical to yours. At the
time I figured that I had little to lose so I just grabbed the lens
and pulled it straight. It made a noise , much as you supposed, like
plastic threads clicking over each other.

That was at least 4 , maybe 6 , years ago. The camera still works 100%
- except for the crappy batteries. The lens retracts , zooms, focuses
etc etc. with no problems at all.

Thanks for the boost of confidence: I gave it a hearty pull and...
SNAP! It's good as new again!

--
-Toby
Add the word afiduluminag to the subject to circumvent my email filters.

Excellent!