Anyone have a camera repair shop that they would actually recommend? Preferably someone you have used before and trust?

My Canon Digital Rebel has a little foam seal that appears to be deteriorating. I'm getting a lot of little black specs on my CCD. I can clean them, but they reappear pretty quickly which shouldn't be happening since I'm not really changing lenses. In addition, the autofocus isn't working for crap which I think is a result of the black specs.

I could try to remove/replace this foam myself, but in this case I think I'd rather just pay a professional if I could find someone trustworty.

12/13/2005 2:27:53 PM

The camera repair store closest to NCSU that was always talked about within the College of Design is: Southeastern. here's the website: http://www.southeasterncamera.com/

hm... weird - if that above link is correct, they've changed locations. this is the location i was referring to (and have been to myself): http://triangle.citysearch.com/map?mode=geo&id=6179263

-ZiP!-

[Edited on December 13, 2005 at 3:49 PM. Reason : clarification]

12/13/2005 3:47:18 PM

ah, cool. I'll take it by there sometime soon.

12/13/2005 4:04:15 PM

one of my profs is pretty old and has been doing photography for a long time, and he speaks very highly of southeastern.

12/13/2005 5:05:53 PM

another vote for southeastern.

i haven't used them, but when i went in for a new lens, they told me exactly how i broke my last one, without handling it.

12/13/2005 5:10:55 PM

Southeastern it is, but their hours suck. 10-6? What is this, the 1940's? Thx for the replies.

12/13/2005 5:28:19 PM

^its what lunch hours are for.

it's so 1990s to eat lunch.

-ZiP!-

12/13/2005 5:37:55 PM

http://www.keh.com has a great repair service. I've sent a dozen lenses and camera bodies to them over the years and they come back in better shape than when I bought it from them year before. I haven't used Southeastern for repair before but I have purchased from them before, decent service.

12/13/2005 5:57:12 PM

Follow up:
I took the camera to Southeastern. They told me it would probably be $40 to replace the foam seal and another $10 or so to clean everything in there. I thought that was a little high, but I really just wanted to get the camera fixed so I left it with them. Anyway, the camera was done within a week and the final cost was $19. The repair looks good, he got a spot off the mirror that I hadn't been able to get off by wiping with a lens cloth, and I'm really happy with the turnaround time. I highly recommend them to anyone needing camera work.

I went ahead and picked up a new lens that I had been planning on buying and they came very close to price matching the wolfcamera.com total price. It was $400 on wolfcamera.com with free shipping and no sales tax. They ended up knocking about $30 off their price so it only came out to about $15 more. It was worth it to me since I got it before Christmas and I have a good local shop that I can return to if it fails during warranty.

12/24/2005 5:31:16 PM

Southeastern is still there, too, it's just called Peace Camera. The owners broke up.

12/24/2005 5:35:27 PM