Lunar Tech Misadventures 002
Repairing a Nikon D80 DSLR Camera

This post is based on a thread I wrote over the course of 3 days on Mastodon during summer vacation back in 2021.
So the paragraphs will just basically be posts copied from there, with some slight adjustments where needed.
(This has largely been adding/rewriting missing/bad alt text for like half of the pictures)
Again this is a story from the past, written in the past, and it will reference some things from the perspective of me 2 years ago.
At the time I just finished highschool and now I'm a second year university student.

Introduction

I've been into photography for a very long time. At first I used a pocket camera my parents won in a competition. Later, still in kindergarten, I got my own Canon A495. Eventually my parents got the first camera that really let me taste advanced photography - the Nikon D80 - which will be the star of this thread. At just over 79 000 photos taken, unfortunately the camera no longer works, only displaying "Err" on the top display. But that's not the end of the story...

A photo of the front of the Nikon D80 DSLR. There is no lens attached, only a protective cover.

A photo of the back of the Nikon D80. The screen looks quite scratched up and/or dirty. The rubber eyepiece is taken off (because I wear glasses).

A photo of the top of the Nikon D80. The power dial is visibly worn down. The small secondary screen is showing "Err".

At home, I now have access to a Nikon D3300 - a smaller, lighter and much newer camera. But, I plan to go to university, and I can't take that one with me (my sibling owns it). So, I decided I would see if I can repair the D80. After doing a bit of research, I found that on this model, this issue is usually caused by a small plastic part holding another piece in place breaking off, which could be fixed by either replacing it with a tiny screw or using superglue.

I have been planning to do this for a while, and now that I'm done with my finals and actually have the necessary free time, I am mostly ready to attempt fixing it. I spent this morning looking for the actual camera and it's charger, now I'll have to clean my desk to not get any dust or other debris inside the camera and prepare all the tools (there are a few cables that need to be desoldered and resoldered IIRC). I'll share my progress here later.

Disassembly

Update: I've mostly disassembled the camera (to the required degree), and am very close to getting access to the module that's likely broken. It went mostly smooth, except a few mishaps:

• breaking off one wire because I thought I wouldn't need to desolder it
• having a screw fall inside the assembly, which fortunately turned out to not be a big deal
• despite my best efforts, getting 2 specks of dust on the sensor (I ended up blowing those off with compressed air, which didn't work perfectly but it's fine for my needs)

In case you're wondering how the camera looks inside, I've attached a few photos. As far as tools go, I'm mostly using the iFixit essential electronics toolkit here, it's really good for this kind of stuff.
I'll also take this opportunity to say thank you to the wonderful creator of this blog who shared really good step by step instructions on fixing cameras with this issue: https://davidhkblog1.blogspot.com/2018/09/fixing-nikon-d80-err-aperture-control.html
The one thing I would say is that except for the back board still held in place by 2 connectors, desoldering the wires is easier than keeping them soldered.

A photo showing the whole internal assembly of the camera laying on a towel, surrounded by the many pieces of the outside casing and some tools.

A photo of the front part of the internal assembly, which contains, among others, the shutter and the viewfinder. The part I plan to fix is somewhere in there too.

A photo showing my desk with some computer screens with the repair manual and a blog explaining the repair process. In the middle there's the parts shown in other pictures. To the right of those is a parts tray and some notes with screw numbers, among other tools.

A photo of the back of the whole internal camera assembly with the outside shell and some internal components taken off. There are multiple green PCBs, one hanging on a few ribbon cables. One of them houses the sensor of the camera.

The damaged part

Soo my initial diagnosis was correct! A small part inside the aperture control unit got damaged. It's a cog wheel with conductive brushes attached to it by 2 plastic posts. From what I've read online, on the Nikon D80 and D90, after some time the cap of one of the posts can break off, and cause the camera to malfunction. Now that I took it out, I can repair it by replacing the posts with tiny screws or using superglue to secure the brushes in place. I'm not sure in which way I'll do it yet.

A photo of the front internal assembly with the aperture control unit taken out. You can see that under where it was there is a plastic gear, which is the broken part.

A photo of the front internal assembly with the cover of the plastic gear taken off. You can see that there are some metal contacts/brushes that are attached to the gear via tiny plastic caps, one of which has broken off.

A close up of the plastic gear. You can very clearly see that on the left there is a plastic cap holding the metal contacts in place, while on the right it's missing.

The fix

Another day, another update :blobcat: So, I've managed to superglue the broken piece back together, and started reassembling the camera. I have also come to realize that resoldering all of the small cables will be a pain, only because they're really close to other components and connectors, so I'll have to be super careful not to melt or damage anything. I am now glad that I got a bunch of different soldering tips for this iron, I'm gonna use a small D-type tip as the conical one was too small.

The plastic gear with the missing cap glued back on. You can see I also applied a generous amount of superglue in the areas that don't need to be conductive to make sure it doesn't break again.

Forgot to mention, this spring in partucular was hell to get back in place. I spent like 15 minutes messing around with tweezers trying to do it.

A picture of a tension spring in the area near where the plastic gear goes.

And here's a photo comparing the part before and after the repair.

The picture on the left shows how the part looked before the repair, and the picture on the right shows how it looked after the repair. Before, the cover of one of the plastic posts was missing, while after, the cover is back on, and the part has been secured on both sides with a generous amount of super glue.

Reassembly

So I suppose today's update is slightly more boring, it was a lot of screwing things together and soldering. I should have taken more photos but oh well, I was already fairly tired when I started working on this today. Tomorrow I'll have to resolder 6 wires in a really tight space, and after that it should be mostly screwing things together. Hopefully the camera will be working again soon :blobcat: P.S.: I've messed up and had to delete and redraft this 3 times lmao I really am exhausted.

Some cables connecting the front and back of the main assembly being resoldered. They are among many surface mount components, and there's a lot of ribbon cables around them.

The back of the camera with the top part of the casing put on.

The bottom of the assembly, showing where I resoldered one of the cables.

Time for another update! I've finally taken out some fans to blow the flux fumes away from my face when soldering instead of blowing them away myself (must have looked really funny). I've also resoldered the wires I mentioned in the previous post, I also attached a photo from after cleaning and tinning the pads, and one when I was done resoldering the cables. After that, the reassembly was relatively easy as I didn't need to take out the soldering iron again.

A photo of the left side of the assembly, with a bundle of loose wires from the top casing on the side. A PCB with connectors that would get in the way is held up by a magnifying glass.

A close up photo of the left side of the assembly, with all the wires soldered and neatly tucked into place. The PCB with connectors is now also in place.

A picture of two black 120mm computer fans on the left side of my desk.

I took a lot of photos this time but they're fairly boring, very similar to the photos I've posted when disassembling the camera. Still I'll share a few :)

Same as the previous photo but you can see more of the front-right casing at the bottom of the camera.

A photo of the front of the camera, with basically all of the external casing now attached.

It Works!

But, I bet you're all wondering what happened after powering it on for the first time... Well, it works! Initially it still said "Err", but after I pressed the trigger once, it realized there's no longer a problem and went back to ordinary!

The camera completely reassembled, with the strap and a lens back on.

A photo of the camera screen showing the first photo taken after finishing the repair. The date is shown as 01/01/2006 because the RTC got reset while the camera was taken apart.

A photo of the top display, no longer showing "Err".

To make the ending more satisfying, here's a few photos I took with it just now:

A close-up photo of some flowers. They have a yellow center with pointy, red petals that have yellow edges which are slightly rolled-up.

A photo of a bush with tiny green leaves and tiny, round, reddish-pink flowers. There are some bees pollinating the flowers.

A photo of some flowers inbetween grass under a bush. The petals are pink, with v-shaped ends, there are black spots near the center and the center part is very tiny and yellow.

A photo of daisies in the grass from the side. Most of them have white petals but a few of them have partially pink petals.