What do you do when you have something which is beyond repair?

I recently stumbled upon an old digital camera which was previously deemed missing. For many many years, this little camera lay dormant in a box somewhere in the office. 

Unfortunately, it was a goner.

But it had served us well over the years. So, instead of just chucking the entire unit in to the trash bin, I decided to open it and have a peek inside.

A few screws later…. this is how it looked it. The back cover came off, revealing the motherboard and the LCD screen.

After removing it from the ‘outer casing’.. this is how it looks like. The lens assembly, the cylindrical flash capacitor and the SD card slot. At the bottom of the lens ‘barrel’ I presume is the little motor which either focuses or power zooms the lens.

From the other side, you can see the flash unit and the round black thing is the speaker. Just below the flash is a little white/greyish pimple like thing which is the focus assist lamp.. or rather LED. The extreme left is the optical viewfinder… something which you do not get on the latest compact digicams these days.

This is the back of the lens assembly. The little hole is where the light comes through the lens and hits the sensor.

Speaking of the lens. This is quite an interesting find. There’s only two aperture setting on this digicam. Big… and small.

And here comes the interesting part… the sensor.

This is the sensor.. on the motherboard. The blueish glass sitting on top of the sensor is some kind of a filter or protector. I am not much of a camera hardware tech guy. haha. If I am not mistaken.. that’s the low pass filter. I am not sure. But.. moving on…

A perspective view of the sensor.

This.. ladies and  gentlemen.. is the sensor. Fully naked and exposed. Interesting colors eih? This is the 1/2.5” sensor usually fitted into standard point and shoot cameras.

This is the 1/2.5” sensor in comparison with a 10 sen coin. In comparison….

… the 1/2.5” sensor next to the LCD screen, which.. is very similar in size to a full frame 35mm sensor. Don’t ask me why I do not have a real life 35mm digital image sensor as comparison. I do not have the luxury of someone handing me their full frame digital SLR for me to dissect.

I had dun taking this camera apart. Unfortunately, I shall leave it as it is for now. I have totally no idea how to put them all back together.

Now if there’s anyone out there who have a camera or a handphone camera which you wish to dispose of, lemme know. I would love to dissect them

Here’s a very simple and quick calculation based on the assumption that there’s about 100,000 drivers out there like me. I think that’s a very conservative number. But let’s stick to that number for now.

Each time I go fill up my car, 35 litres of fuel goes into it. I fill up roughly about 6 times in a month. Another conservative figure. This means that in one month, I would have purchased 210 litres of RON95 fuel. Assuming 100,000 people like me, we would have consumed 21,000,000 Litres of fuel a month.

Let’s see that in point form :

• 35 Litres per fill up
• 6 fill ups per month
• 210 Litres of fuel per month per user
• 100,000 users
• 21,000,000 Litres per month for all 100k users.

From tomorrow, there will be a reduction in subsidy of RON95 amounting to RM0.05 per litre.

That’s RM1.05 Million saved each month. Or RM12.6 Million a year.

Wow…

According to the Malaysia Automotive Association, we have a total of 3,749,782 vehicles registered in Malaysia from 1980 till March 2010. [source]. Ok la.. assuming half of those vehicles have been scrapped due to age, damaged or rendered not road-worthy, there’s still 1,874,891 vehicles on the road today. So my estimation of 100,000 users is indeed extremely conservative.

But just for information purposes, let’s use our newly found figure and take out 1,000,000 vehicles out of the equation. So that we can equal out those who drives less and thus uses less fuel. That leaves us 874,891 users on the road. So feed that back into my little simple equation and you get :

Savings from subsidy per month : RM 9,186,355.50

Saving from subsidy per year : RM 110,236,266.00

WOW!! Now that’s a lot of money.

Let’s see if these savings are put to good use.

Again, I am not finance guy. Neither am I an economist. I am in no way qualified to actually do any calculations like this. The above is a very simple layman calculations based on whatever I remember from my Form 5 Math classes.

I may have even misinterpreted the tabulated figures on the MAA website. HAHAHA.  Maybe someone out there can tabulate a better and more accurate figure.

Cheerio!!

Seriously… the 24mm is a nice piece of lens. Definitely keeping it. Sometime ago I wanted to sell it off to finance another lens of similar focal length. But might consider selling it if the price is right. It’s not your everyday lens..

The photo above was taken I think about a year back.

Here she is again posing… she’s getting very good at this. I just love how the lens throw the background into a blur. Yet you get the wide angle feel to to the photo. Nice! I like!

This is the new pose we taught her. She learnt rather fast.

And… of cos.. a photo of Danielle and her uncle…. ME!!! hehehe

And the 24mm is also a semi macro.. meaning it can go quite close to the subject…

.. like this bowl of prawn mee.

Jessie followed us on an outing one day. I was with my 24mm. hehe. It’s kind of a good walkabout lens… for me.

Semi macro shot of a Canon 5D attached with a Lens Baby. Another interesting.. very interesting lens.

Another semi macro shot.. of.. erm… a tree bark and some moss.

Interesting flare…

Nice angle.. 24mm might be a bit wide for some people. But I like it!

Can do this kind of photos.. hehehe.

Ok.. i shall go out and take more photos using this lens. It’s kind of a fun lens.