Dropped my panasonic lumix tz6 earlier and now the lens is stuck about 1/3 of the way out just whirrs and comes up with zoom error . Anyone a camera repair man who can tell me if its bin fodder or fixable

bttt anyone??

the plastic collars which move away from the camera body sit with plastic pins inside a grooved channel which, as it rotates around the inside of the collar, moves outwards in a spiral. i would guess the pins have jumped out of the channel and therefore got stuck. either that or the cog which is turned by the motor has become seperated from the plastic collars - broken off? , if this is the case i reckon u'd be able to turn the collars manually without any effort and the collars will close and open.

some of these cameras can be taken apart and put back together, but are a fidle, ironically, u could use a camera to make sure it goes back together correctly.

Under guarantee? We had one that did a similar thing and it was repaired FOC....

Have Panasonic UK got a repair facility? (check their UK website). Fuji certainly do, and their prices were quite civilised.

I sent my compact camera to Fuji, they wrote back to say that repair was uneconomical and offered me a big discount on a new camera (which I bought) and a few weeks later I got the original camera back - working!

I'm not saying that Panasonic are the same - but it's worth a look...

I dropped my SLR on the lens recently and something similar happened, though it was the focus mechanism (zoom isn't motorized). I managed to succesfully take it apart and fix it - it was essentially as mrwibble describes - a part had bounced out of it's guide.

It was fiddly enough on an SLR lens - I can imagine a compact would be harder to work on, but worth a try if you're brave and think you could get it back together again. Fairly high chance of it being a flimsy plastic bit broken though - I think I was just lucky!

Cheers guys . Imay have a go at stripping it myself then