My Ixus rig after the accident

• the rig was severely bent out of shape and all three carbon fibre tripod legs were badly split or broken
• the tilt servo horn (fixed to the camera holder) snapped off
• the receiver casing was badly split and broken
• the Canon Ixus lens, which was extended at the time, was twisted to one side. It refused to close and the LCD screen showed the dreaded E18 error.

The camera was long out of warranty and sending it back to Canon for repair hopelessly uneconomic. I decided to disassemble the thing (see here for full details of how to do this).

Be warned, this is a very time-consuming process! Eventually I got the lens unit out and open. The damage was actually quite major - a plastic ring piece had broken and two small screws that run in guides to push the lens in and out had been bent over, deforming the thin metal ring they screw into. As a result the lens unit was well and truly jammed. It was clear that it wasn't possible to go any further without breaking the lens unit, so I gave up at that point.

The bottom picture at the left shows the results of the dissection.

Despite all this damage, when I connected the rig up to a battery only two things did not work - the receiver crystal (which rattled, so something inside must have come loose or broken) and the tilt servo, which had stripped a gear.