Can't win them all

Update (many days later): Finally uploaded the photos. 

Update (0921h): Grmbl, for some reason my pictures did not upload, and I don't have copies here at work. I'll upload them in the evening. 

In December, my most excellent little sister brought me an Exilim EX-V8 from Japan, a move that saved me about 80 CHF.

Hm, I just wanted to link to the post where I told you all about it, only to discover that I never wrote one! Well, suffice to say that it is a very good point-and-shoot, with electronic image stabilisation and a 7x optical zoom, without any outer moving parts!

Unfortunately, the inspired -Japan-move means that I have no warranty (unless I ship it to Japan), and of course now something has gone wrong with it. It seems I should have been a bit more careful in shlepping it around:

According to the manual, "Lens Error 2" means that I knocked it around too much, and something in the lens assembly has moved. I can still take pictures, only the image stabilisation does not work anymore, which is a real shame, because it gave me almost two f-stops more.

Well, what do you do as an upstanding physicist if something is broken? Of course, you take it apart to try and  fix it:

 ...and then you see how complicated it looks, and immediately chicken out. I was just too afraid of irreversibly breaking something if I took it apart further. Because it still works, and I am sure it wouldn't after I was done with it.

And what do we learn from this story?

Exactly, I will need a new point-and-shoot by Christmas.