Don’t Panic
As with any unfortunate event, the key is to not panic. Falling to pieces and getting overly emotional about the event will not help keep your mind clear and make the most of the situation. Panicking leads to other mistakes, which can be costly in their own right. Keep your cool! A bit of profanity is permissible.Grab The Pieces, All Of Them
Once you are finished with your (minor) freak out, because you didn’t listen to my first bit of advice, start picking up the pieces. Unless you are in a calm setting, such as at home in the kitchen, you are probably out in public and need to make sure all the bits are grabbed before they get scattered. Enlist help if need be. You never know which little piece will be helpful in getting things back together. Even if it looks unimportant, grab it.Take Out The Battery
If your battery hasn’t flown free from your camera and skittered half a mile away (I swear most camera batteries are built with self preservation instincts and fly free from a breaking camera at the first sign of trouble) now is a good time to take it out. If your camera is partially functioning, more damage can be done from parts trying to move when they don’t quite line up. I’l admit I haven’t always followed this advice. Which is why I now suggest this advice. Accept your fate and deal with it. Power off your camera completely to avoid additional damage.Grab Your Flash Card
I have actually sent back a camera for repair with the card still in it. This, again, comes from the first point. I got all freaked out about the damage and didn’t grab my card, even a few days later. The irony is I often hear people tell me, “If I dropped my camera in the lake, that’s that!” When in reality it often is not “that”. Your card is a solid state device and, barring electric jolt, will retain the images recorded to it. Corrosives will cause damage, but a quick dunk in a pool of water, while a bad thing for your camera and the electricity it carries, is not necessarily fatal to your images. Grab that card out and dry it off, completely. Heck, you may even have one interesting last image as your camera met its fate.Do No Harm
Guilty, yet again. I have tried to fix my semi-broken cameras before. That typically made them completely broken cameras. And made the repair bill higher. Unless you are a pro at this type of fixing, your expensive DSLR is not a good item on which to start learning about camera repair. Leave it to the pros.Check Your Warranty
Before you send in your camera for repair, they’ll want to know about your warranty. This starts with recording the information some place logical and easy to retrieve. Maybe in online email. Maybe on your cell phone (if you are on a trip). Maybe a tattoo. Whatever works for you, when you buy a camera, record this information for easy retrieval. I once failed to send in a computer for repair because I thought it was past the warranty and the reciept was burried in years of boxed paper. So I put it off for a month. When I found the receipt I learned I was now out of the warranty period, but I wasn’t when the incident occurred. Having an easy way to find this information will make life easier when it is already stressful.Also check to see what your warranty covers. Most won’t cover negligence (accidents) and other incidents. Know before you have something go wrong.
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