Our photo department received some bad news a few weeks ago: Our longtime camera serviceman told us he’s retiring. He’ll be missed.

It’s been nice having a personal relationship with a camera tech who also lives in the same state. The bad news is that I doubt there’ll be any young camera tech taking his place. After-all, modern digital cameras are similar to computers, and you are more likely to replace gear after 3-5 years than you are to repair it.

Because I can no longer recommend our sunflower state camera tech, you basically have two choices for repairing a camera: mail the broken equipment to the manufacturer or start shopping for a replacement.

Sending a camera back to the manufacturer is the best place to get a repair done right. I suspect that many camera shops offering repair services do the same thing, shipping gear to the manufacturer. Even our camera tech would ship gear to Canon and Nikon for more troublesome issues.

In many of these cases we’d get bad news. I recall notes from manufacturers reading, “This equipment is no longer serviceable,” or “This is beyond repair — parts NLA.” I guess NLA stands for either “No Longer Available” or “Not Lucky After-all.” When the camera manufacturer holds his nose and hands your gear back you know you’re in deep trouble.

On the other hand, when they do repair your gear, depending on the problem, costs can be high. At the Journal-World, we commonly have $500 repair bills on a single lens or camera that we purchased for $1,500. At some point you have to cut your losses and just update your gear.

Before giving up on a broken camera, a few simple checks might provide an easy fix.

• Memory cards can go bad and make a camera malfunction. Try a different card.

• Batteries can also go bad, especially proprietary camera batteries. Make sure your batteries are fresh and properly installed or try a different battery.

• If you have a camera with interchangeable lenses and are having problems with auto-focus functions and metering, try cleaning off the contact points located on the rear of the lens and at the front of camera.

If your camera has loose pieces, a stuck zoom lens or images that look like Rothko paintings, I’d say you have a serious digital camera issue and you need professional help or possibly a new camera.

— Chief Photographer Mike Yoder can be reached at 832-7141. Check out more photos at ljworld.tumblr.com.