Hi time for a random old school teardown. Check out what I found. This is a Pentax Iq Zoom Easy. Dates from 1995.

Um, this was actually one of my original film cameras. Just like a like a just a go anywhere pocket uh, point and shoot type thing. And it was typical of um, compact consumer film cameras around about uh, that you know, mid 90s, um age And this is where. Look at the big slot for your Sd card in here.

Fantastic. Yeah, old school film. None of that digital rubbish. It lends straight into film.

You can see the Uh four contacts down in there. that was, um for the Kodak Dx, uh coding system for films. and of course you load your film in there. and the cameras.

uh, gotta know, like what, um, speed is the film, how many shots it's got, and stuff like that. So you put that in there and those contacts, a combination of those can determine all that stuff so that the camera knows. and this is pretty much like an auto everything camera. It's got like auto rewind it's it, recognizes the number of shots that you have and it's just you know.

Pretty much a point-and-shoot and on the bottom here we got a Cr123a a battery. Um, I have no idea um how old that battery is. but check it out, it still works and it's got zoom. Um, 38 to 70 millimeter.

Oh look at that beautiful look at that. What a Bobby Dazzler. That's what she said. Um, Anyway, yeah it's a 35 to 70 millimeter.

It's you know, it's auto everything. it's got, um different, uh. flash modes. you know, night? um flash mode, daylight? that? no, it's got bulb.

I think that's bulb mode isn't it? Um, it's got uh, red eye reduction so that of course, um, you know you turn the flash on, you don't want everyone's eyes to turn red um from the flash so that would um time the flash so that that didn't actually um happen and you can see the window on the front there. It's got an infrared auto focus system on there so that just infrared transmitter one of them, an infrared receiver, the other and just shoots out infrared and it can determine uh, focus distance. Of course once you get past a couple of meters it doesn't really matter. Um, I'm not sure how far it actually goes.

I don't know. leave it in the comments if you know. So anyway yeah I did use this bad boy until I got my first digital camera which I I can show you that here it is my very first digital camera ta-da the Kodak Dx 3600 and this had a two times optical zoom. It had uh like it was designed to go into like a dock um system which had the Usb cable on it.

Otherwise um yeah it didn't have like a standard uh usb and it a tiny little like one inch like one point, one and a half inch screen or something. Um and it was a two Meg. Whopping two megapixels. I think it had a 640 by 480 screen and it could record video.

It could record 320 by 200 video. And yes, it still works. And I've actually produced a lot of great shots with this. And now that Sd card? Rubbish.

Um, and yeah, it's got compact, uh, flash. and I think Sd card was a thing back then. Was it uh, yeah. I think I got this in 2000 or thereabouts.

Yeah, probably in 2000. I think it cost like 800 bucks at the time was like oh god, that's expensive. Anyway, that was my first, uh, digital camera and it still works. A treat.

I was actually going to do, um, something with i can't remember what now. anyway. so anyway, this bad boy still works. so this is actually one of the few products I've owned or that I've never taken apart.

so let's do that right now. It'll be a destructive teardown if we have to, because I've got absolutely no use for this uh camera anymore. Um, yeah. Amazing.

The battery still works. I mean, I stopped using this, um, in 2000. once I got my digital camera, I never really went back to film. and uh, my mom did actually use this.

uh, for a while. I can't remember up until when. But yeah, this thing probably like the battery in there's got to be like 15 years old or something. It still works.

a treat. So when. you close the back like this, it'll auto wind. big grinding noise, and um, it'll auto rewind once you get uh, to the end of your shots.

Or you could actually, uh, before if you wanted to like take your film out because of course you can't just take your film out because like, the half of it's like wrapped around here. So of course the old school ones have, um, like the winder, you could wind it back manually. This is all motor driven. There's no manual, um, override, but that, well, there is.

They actually have a button on top and this was the strap that came with it. Someone was thinking, they've got a nice little poker on here and boom like that and close the lens and it'll just keep rewinding, rewinding, rewind, and rewind in until it figures out there's nothing there and shuts off. So anyway, let's take this bad boy apart. There's not much in it.

um, like modern, uh cameras. I've done camera teardowns before and they're fascinating. so let's go. There's a couple of screws on the side here, so it is designed to come apart.

these screws on the end. here. These are actually much longer than the other ones because that's uh, designed to reinforce the strap there. So that's good design.

Anyway, I forgot to mention that these are Dx encoding contacts here. Uh, not only was it on the like contacts on the side of the film uh, canister, but it was also um, embedded onto the film as well. actually on the bottom strip. Here's actually a shot of that.

and so when they're processing the film, they know like, uh, what speed and stuff it is. So yeah, it was all automated. Oh, something fell out. Oh, that was the uh, just the film sort of guide at the side and the uh, hinge for the back cover.

Okay, there's one pesky bloody screw which won't come out there. We go put a bit of tension on that and she'll come all right. So I think I've got a good lot of it on there. Um, will I have another charge capacitor in here? Will I get a zap? Um, I don't think I didn't I didn't turn it on, did I? Oh, there we go.

That just comes off. Got some rubber baby buggy bumper uh, carbon buttons on the top so that's uh, expected and there's your zoom lever down there. It's just got a couple of uh, wipe contacts on there so we'll see that on the top of the Pcb, no doubt. and ta-da we're in.

There's not much there. Yeah, there's those uh contacts for the zoom so it's not like like it was, just like, is the zoom like off in the middle? Is it going that direction? Or is it going this direction And that's it. It's like a digital button. It's not resistive or anything.

and there is the no touchy part until you've discharged this. Um, that's the flash capacitor. So they take up a lot of room. Don't know why they have like flashes still in modern cameras I don't like.

I don't get it like even like modern digital ones I'm talking about anyway. like yeah, take up half the bloody room in the camera. These new compact cameras. It's crazy.

All right. let's see if we can find the contact in here that looks like one pin ta-da There you go. 267 volts is back to front. all the electrons are falling out and yeah, there we go.

265 volts. So the sucker's charged up so I want to put that on auto V mode which will put in a couple of K load and we'll see that go down pretty quickly. 780 volts, 34 volts, 19 volts, 12 volts, Boom boom boom. We're discharging that and we'll get some recovery on that if I put it back to Volts which is high impedance and then we probe that again, we'll get some capacitive recovery there that dielectric recovery, but it's not going to go back up to 300 volts.

So anyway, that's safe to work on now. this whole thing's moving. Have I missed a screw? Is there a screw somewhere else? Maybe down in night? So sneaky bugger in the battery compartment? Oh there we are, right. it was the battery compartment that actually held it in place.

There you go. So ta-da So the whole thing comes out. There's our case assembly. It's got the plastic on the front or single um shot molded abs.

and um, there you go. Got a four four contacts. Geez, they really? oh no, that's the half press. That's right, Because um, yeah.

you do the half press for the Uh to set focus and then set focus distance and then you can move. uh, the camera after you've done that. So yeah, so that's how they did. You can see that on the top there.

That's how they did that. uh, half shot focus system. so I think you might find the geometry of that. The button in the middle is down further than the others, so it takes.

so either one of these three. That's why they got three on the outside. If they if two of those, I bet you they're all connected. If two of those.

Yep, Yep, you can see the trace between them, right? So if two of them goes down, then uh, you'll get that to, that's the focus. and then once it, what's the middle one comes down and hits boom. That's the uh, shutter release. and uh.

anyway. they've got a, um, just a single chippy on there that's driving everything. That'd just be a custom asic um, thing from Pentax I would presume. So there you go.

That's a good look. We've got some flat flex in there. I was expecting to see some flat flakes. We've got some resistors and a cap on there.

Um, I don't know why they seem to be going into the lens assembly because yeah, you'd expect that. would that be for the motor drive for the lens? So I think these gears over here. These are your drive for the zoom lens to come out and this flat flex must just go in to the Um lens. Is there another element in there that needs to shift? Um as it comes out? I mean, it's no.

It doesn't have a great range. it's only 37 to 70 millimeters so it's not much. But anyway, um, this board down here. That is just the uh, high voltage Um board for the uh charge for the flash, uh, capacitor.

So there's a little transformer in there. you can see that and uh, that's just a couple of control wires going over. Now this connector. Rubbish.

They've just wired those straight on. thank you very much. Now these two wires here. they're going down.

They're going down into there so I assume that there's that's the take-up spool for the film. so I'm not sure I assume like it has like some sort of switch in there to detect micro switch or something to detect whether or not it's there or something. I'm not sure what the deal is but anyway, yeah, that'd just be a contact and they've just wired those all the way back. Jeez they you know you have to snake it all the way there.

couldn't just put it to the board over here and then run the traces over. No siree, bob. We'll run those all the way with Lbj and there's another flat flex down in there and that obviously connects down to the contacts. Those Dxr contacts for the film.

So yep, that's an entirely separate flat flex. I don't see where that oh no, no no, is it all in one? It does a split. ah, does like half of it fold over under here and the other bit goes out there. Ah, we'll probably find that out once we take it all apart.

Give you a look through the old school viewfinder. let's see if we can. There you go, That's that's the scope over there. Yeah, this is not.

uh, through the lens. Now that Slr rubbish. So there you go. and it's got various indicators on there that uh, will show up.

You see, it's got the uh, the framing. Uh, like the the focus, uh, framing and stuff. and uh. I think there's a couple of other enunciators on there as well.

And I spy with my little eye a little Cds photo cell over there so that's measuring um, ambient light level. And of course, as I said, the transmitter and receiver for the infrared. They're just going to be lens modules with an infrared lead and an infrared uh photo diet in there and that'll be it. Um, of course, you know the lens assembly for the viewfinder.

We've got a flash there. That's all pretty boring stuff. Do like how they've put these stiffener plates in there? is that is that glued onto the yeah, yeah, it's glued on there. and there we go.

Oh, they must be product. Oh no, they're not production test points. They're actually contacts you can see. Cool, huh? So they're using spring contacts there to then push onto the pads on the flat flex and then these ones at the top.

They don't go anywhere. They don't go anywhere. So they are. they production test points or something like that.

Perhaps. What's this pair of wires going all the way over here for? it's all a bit how you're doing, isn't it? Um, yeah. they just didn't care. Um, and you know, fair enough.

I'm just going to cut that. Oh, there you go. Okay, I was wondering how this is actually connecting. You know how I suspected that the main flat flex was folded back on itself? Well, look, they've exposed the contacts there on this flat flex which goes into the lens assembly and um and then goes over to the uh, sorry, no, yeah, these are the Dx.

Uh, contacts, aren't they? Yes, they are. But then it's got other contacts down in there. Don't know what that is yet. But anyway.

yeah. Look, there's a matching set of pads there. so that's what. that metal bar was doing.

That metal bar there is pushing down and doing just doing a press fit connector there as well as doing all four of those Dx contacts. Isn't that neat? Um, yeah, they didn't. They killed two, a couple of birds with one stone there. Nice.

And this wire here is actually, uh, the positive of the battery terminal there. So yeah, the contact on the top of the case like that. that just makes. that's what.

that's how up there is. and then that tab just sits in there. it makes contact. and Bob's your uncle, tell you what.

The button though. this board ain't ain't budging. You know there's a screw in there. There's another screw there.

but there. No. Oh dude. that was obvious.

What do you think these holes in the board here are for? They're for screws to get out which holds this entire assembly. Not just the Pcb, but uh yeah. the whole, the whole show on top there it is. Sneaky bugger.

All right. that whole assembly now should come out. Another couple of contacts over there. It's there's something under there.

What is that? Don't know. Yeah. So there we go. That all comes out as one big assembly so we can take that off later.

Uh, and we can also find out what these two do here. Oh, it's a oh okay. oh. it's the take-up motor of course.

Okay, I thought it was dead down here. I thought that was okay. No. okay.

the cogs must go under the bottom, right? Got it? Okay, they must be tied together. I think if we take off that plate, I think we'll find that there's some cogs under there that tie it together somehow because that that is a motor. Uh-huh. Exactly what I said.

Geez, that's actually quite complicated. Is there a screw under there? I think there is. I think that's the last one. And is that gonna all pop open? Yeah.

Look, see, see, they're all gonna. Okay. Yep. So that's the.

That's the drive for the side that night. Now we still got another screw. There's something that protrudes there that's I don't know. This will come apart.

There you go there. You go there. It is there. It is.

Yeah. So those wheels were on the bottom. You can see the marks where they were all on the bottom. So that all drives the uh, take-up spool over here.

So the is over at this side. Um, so the take-up spool. It's yeah, designed to like, Not like there's no whiplash on it or something and it's maybe keeps tension and keeps the film flat Or something like that. You know it helps keep it flat.

I know that the bottom, um, flap. You know, the thing on here that's designed to sort of keep our pressure on the back of the film. That's got a little springy system in there. Oh okay.

well dude. no. it's got to rewind of course. So yeah, it's silly me.

So there you go. it's got to rewind. And we can put those cogs back in like that, hopefully. And we've got everything back in there.

There we go. We've got it all in. We've got it all in. Is that? Yeah, Yeah, There we go.

And then this thing that I said moves before. Okay, this is the engagement wheel for when you want to engage the actual when you want to make it, go in reverse. There it is. Can we do it? Yep, Yep.

And then it's so that that just levers that in and out like that. Okay, so is there an actuator that does that? Or is that just the directional? No. I don't think so. I think it just relies on the fact that which direction that's going.

So when it reverses the motor, it's sort of. uh. it might sort of like the force might just pull that back or something. Not exactly sure, we are missing a cog here.

Yeah, don't know how that's going on. But anyway. there you go. Groovy, huh? That's actually, um, surprisingly complicated for such a relatively simple, like you know, a bottom of the range consumer type point and shoot camera that's got a lot of gear goodness in there.

That's fascinating. Wow. so this motor here is not for driving that because that goes out this side. As I said that, there's more gears in there you can see that is the focus.

Uh, the zoom drive. So this is the zoom drive motor. The drive for the uh, forward and the film advance and the film uh uh, reverse as well. Um, actually is inside the take up spool here.

So we'll take off the zoom drive. There, it is there. So yep, that was a Yep, there was a cog in there and that just dries dries the zoom can we manually? Uh yep. Yep.

we can manually adjust that. There you go, Tada, that's the zoom. So yeah, it needs some flat flex going into there. so obviously it's doing something internally in the lens.

Hey, there's a little motor that's cute. You could reuse that for something. Okay, the lens body goes all the way in there, so there might be more screws required. You can see that.

Uh yeah, you can't actually get into these things. But yeah, putting them back together. I guess you'd get used to it. but they're bloody complicated.

just like even like the modern digital cameras. If you saw my recent Sony Rx 100 Mark Iv tear down, you can see how annoying the uh designs are to work on. Uh, that's that's a double sided low. Joby.

There you go. Got some tents down there, an inductor, a couple of diodes, and uh, I've got an So8 a couple of S08s down there as well doing something that's an Atmel 93c and 46.. So it's got an E-squared prom in there to, uh, just remember stuff. I don't know what it needs to.

Oh it. Okay, yes, if you take it out, it needs to remember, uh, what? uh, shot it's up to and stuff. So yeah, I guess it saves that to the E Squared problem. uh, presumably every uh time you take a shot.

so it knows. So when you change the battery, if you take it out, put it back in it doesn't lose where it's up to. That would be pretty darn important, because, like, there's no, I don't think there's any way to know how far the film is actually through. You've got to know the number of shots at the start and you have to assume that you know the film is like at the first shot and stuff.

and then once it gets to the count, you know, 24 shots or whatever. 36 and then it would know. Okay, I can't advance this film anymore and then I'll do the auto rewind thing. So yeah, it stores it in there every time, but you know it, it only has to take that one every shot.

You know people aren't taking hundreds of thousands of photos with these things because every time you press the button, it costs you money so you're pretty careful what you actually shot back in the day. Okay, I had to get that spring out there and ta-dah that all comes out in one assembly. There you go. Oh yeah, so it's yeah.

it's doing some focusing. Okay, so that must be the yeah, that's the focus stuff. So yeah, we can just spin the body like that and extend it. There you go.

Bob's your uncle. You just extend that back. I don't think it's You know, it's not like a huge multi-lens arrangement like you get these days. Oh, there you go.

Check out all your uh, teeth on there to get that to the correct orientation. There's a lot of art that goes into that, Although, even though this one's relatively simple, there you go. so we're going to see you can ever get the right light angle. You can really see down in there.

You can see the inner grooves in there. whatever is there a specific name for those? What they're like doing inside there like that. That's there you go, that's fascinating and all that is going to come off. and that just connects right.

That just connects through. There's something inside there and I'll add a link up here. and uh, down below and at the end for my um, Sony lens teardown which is fascinating. Uh, if you haven't seen that where I also demonstrate, uh, the image stability and stuff like that, I have a play around with all that sort of jazz.

So yeah, that was, uh, much more fascinating than this simple lens. But um, yeah. once you know, even like this is probably the simplest zoom lens you can get like 35 to 70 millimeters. like there's nothing fancy at all.

yet you have to go to all this sort of trouble to get that sucker to do its business. Wow, look at that. Or are they actually, um, just like, uh, positional encoder sensors to know where it is in the zoom um range. And if you force your way into there, there's a spring.

I did not expect a spring, so there's a spring holding that goes onto the back lens assembly like that and that just goes into the front. um, shutter. we can get into there. And yep, there's the encoders I was telling you about.

There were there. that was that other, uh, flat flex. So the contacts in there when it slides in and out. There should be matching contacts on here.

Yes, there are. There you go. There's your matching contacts on there, so it knows positionally where it is. Um, in the zoom range.

Okay, let's pop this bad boy out. It's not going to come out. I have no idea how this comes out. This is embarrassing.

So there's the pieces of the lens assembly. We've got the main lens, which uh, goes next to the um So I was almost going to say sensor geez, sacrilege. Um, or like it goes to the film And then we've got the iris on the front like that, which I cannot get out for the life of me. So yeah, um, anyway, that will have a little um iris, uh, motor in there.

um that does that. Then we've got the uh, positional contacts like this, which, um, as we saw, uh, went along the strip where was it over here and they connect over to, uh, the ribbon cable over here so that it's able to know which position that it's actually in. And then we've got the um, just the assembly which has the weird-ass spiral cuts in it so that uh, it can, um, yeah, do its lensy thing And sometimes it's not just in and out, sometimes it goes out and then back in a bit and then back out and stuff like that and they're more complicated lenses. They're really remarkable stuff.

This one's relatively simple as far as the zoom lens goes. Probably as simple as you get. So there's the viewfinder assembly. You can see the worm drive down in there and that will pull that back and forth as you do your zoomy business.

But apart from that, yeah, they've just got some lenses in there. Bob's your uncle. You can probably see just on the window there, the framing, uh, and focus bit and they're supposed to. I think I didn't check that whether or not it had an on-screen element doesn't look like it looked like it has that at all.

There's no ability to turn like it's not like an Lcd kind of thing. that, um, turns enunciators off and on. So no, it's not doing that. Mustn't have that.

And you can see the infrared here. This will be the transmitter because that's just the infrared lead there and this will be the receiver. It's got a shielding can on that, so it's got its own little board, so it's doing a little something in there. There's a little, uh, preampy thing happening.

So there you have it. I think that's pretty much all there is to see on that. uh, Pentax Iq Zoom. Easy camera.

and that's actually, um, significantly more complicated build than I thought it would be. I thought it would be a much simpler thing, but like you know, I wasn't expecting. like the big gear mechanism. uh, like that.

that does the auto. uh, rewind and stuff like that. I thought, oh yeah, there'd just be a motor in the backside. I forgot about the take up sprawl and stuff like that and how they're intimately, uh, tied together like that and had like a mechanical latching thing.

I'm sure there's a word for like, a wheel like that that transfers, um, you know, drive from one system of gears to another and stuff like that. Um, I expected a bit more. uh, flat flex in there, maybe. But no, you know, with hindsight, now, you don't really need that.

Uh, you just need. It's sort of like going into the lens assembly like this. And it was nice how they did like they used the metal backing plate there and screwed that down to get the contacts between the uh, ribbon cables. Oh yeah, and that ribbon cable that just came out of there.

I think that was, um, yeah, that was just sitting there like that. So these just must be, uh, test points on the end or whatever. But you know there's a remarkable bit of fit to envelope, uh design that goes into like a bottom of the range compact. And of course, once you go for, uh, once you decide oh, you're going to have a zoom lens, then you know you've got to add the zoom lens.

uh, complexity. And this is probably as simple as it gets I suspect. but uh yeah, this is like a bow. I can't remember how much this thing, uh, cost me back in the mid 90s, but you know it wasn't much, it was just.

I just sort of wanted like a cheap, uh, you know, point-and-shoot um, camera and seemed to do the business. and you know I'd had a fancy whiz-bang Lcd on it. Anyway, yeah, I think it was, uh, pretty cheap, but hands up. If you had this camera or a similar one, I think that's a fascinating.

There's a remarkable amount of design engineering that goes into just a bottom range camera anyway. hope you enjoyed it if you did. give it a big thumbs up. And as always comment down below: catch you next time you.