G10 Flash Problem after Lens Replacement - Ideas?

[Printworthy]

Need some advice on my G10. The story is that I have two G10s -  one had a "lens error" and the other just badly scratched. So I replaced both lenses - one sourced from Chicago and one sourced from China. After replacing both, neither flash will fire. Prior to my meddling both cameras worked perfectly.

I tore them down again and reseated every ribbon cable and internal connection. Same result. If I disable the flash with the menu the shutter fires. If it is set to flash (auto or forced) then the shutter will not fire - the focusing light just hunts around waiting for the flash that never comes.

Now if I put an external flash in the hotshoe - the external flash will fire just fine. Just not the internal. I checked the microswitch under the hotshoe and it is responding fine.  Weird.

So thinking both lens replacement units might be faulty I put the original scratched lens back in (which was working just fine ) and same result - no flash again and no shutter on flash setting.

I am sure it is something I must have done during the reassembly because there are two cameras involved - I just can't figure out what it was.

My other thought is that the capacitor discharged when I disassembled and now it will not re-acquire enough juice to fire.

Any ideas from the Forum? Thanks much.

[Printworthy]

I wish that I could say yes. I assembled the camera about 8 times. I replaced the ribbon cables to the battery box and also to the  top control panel with new ones. I took a known good camera and swapped in the flash unit and that did not resolve it. I even bought an AC adapter thiking the flash might need a full load of power in order to recharge the capacitor but that did not help - flash would not fire. Every other function worked pefectly but when the control wheel was set for forced flash or any flash the shutter would not fire.

My only guess is that when reassembliing the first time I shorted something on the main board with the leftover juice in the capacitor for the flash (as it did momentarily go off). The I read in the manual that you have to "discharge the capacitor" when working on these with a resistor so I did that on subsequent assemblies but had the same outcome - no flash.

I sold my G10 in that condition on ebay and got about $60 bucks.  Still I wish that I had got it working as it was fustrating to replace all those parts and not pinpoint the problem. I am sure that a G10 camera tech somewhere knows the solution and that I why the factory repair service is in place - these are complicated beasts. In hindsight I should have bit the bullet and sent it in with the $200 buck repair fee - it was that good a camera.

Since attemptng that fix with the lens, I went on to swap out lenses in two Canon S100 units that had "Lens error" problems and was very successful - both cameras work perfectly know and I did not introduce any flash failure as I did on my attempt on the G10,

Wish i could be of more help. At least you know the full road I went down on this,

Regards,

Marc