I found and fixed a semi-old Sony Full Frame camera body for $50.
TL;DR: Found a Sony A7ii for effectively $50 at Facebook Marketplace. Fiddling around with the shutter mechanism fixed the issue entirely, and now the camera is fully functional.
I was doomscrolling on Facebook Marketplace looking for dumb deals for various lenses and other junk (definitely was GAS imo) and I came across a A7iii listing listed as not working. I was intrigued about the A7iii being in such a low price ($450), but the seller had highly positive reviews. The seller in the description said that he didn’t had any way to test the camera. I have extra batteries from my main Sony camera, so I can test them and effectively get a fully working A7iii for a massive deal. While I did hesitated to travel almost 100 miles for the camera, I thought it would be worth checking it out.
I arrive to the place to meetup with the seller, in which he showed the A7iii. He mentioned on my way to his town that he also had a A7ii he can bring if I was interested. When meeting up with him and asking why the camera was at a cheap price, he told me that the camera(s) were won in a government auction. When I checked both cameras, the A7iii looked “clean,” and the A7ii had better days (first pic in post). After testing the A7iii, it was clear that there was something wrong with the shutter. I had no batteries at the time to test the A7ii, but I thought that camera would be the worst one to deal with. After some talk with the seller, he gave me an offer to get the A7iii for $250, and an extra $50 for the A7ii. After a moment of indecisiveness, I pulled the trigger to get both for $300.
Being hopeful, I happily drove home and went to inspect the A7iii. While I never repaired a camera, the repair process for digital camera bodies looked a tad more complicated than my usual phone/console repairs. The camera looked fine when I was with the seller, but it was at a shade so I couldn’t see any flaws with the camera. Being in better light, I notice corrosion on the hot shoe. I was worried, “did I get a water damaged camera without checking closely?” I then attempted a disassembly. Horrified, I saw the dreaded white mineral deposits everywhere, giving evidence that the camera was submerged at one point. I wrote it down as a loss and sold it as parts, giving back around $260. I was then left with the A7ii. I borrowed a FW50 battery from my colleague to see the functionality of it. The shutter was clearly jammed. I took out the bottom plate of the camera body and it showed no corrosion. I dug deeper, following a guide that wasn’t in English and had to rely on translated closed captions to know what the repairman was saying. After roughly 2 hours, I successfully took out the shutter module.
When I took the module out, I noticed that testing the shutter manually with my finger on the lever felt fine. I later found out that it was the mechanism that moved the shutter lever was not moving. I fiddled with the gears a bit on the MB charger, reassembled the camera, and finally tested it. It… just started working again. I was dumbfounded how me screwing around with the mechanism fixed the issue. Auto focus was working, both screens were working, and the shutter worked even at burst. I was both happy and mad. Happy because I managed to get a $50 Sony camera to work without having spare parts, but was angry since I just purchased replacement parts for the shutter. Either way, I was ecstatic of such an achievement. I still would have wanted to repair the A7iii, but the water damage was too much. I’m debating if I want to change the shutter still, but might come around doing it eventually. Until then, this camera is now my secondary camera body.