Alright, so my little brother was testing out my cam and put the CF card backwards into the DSLR camera, and 1 of the CF reader pins was bent, I decided to do something about it so i did some research and it was really pricey to get it repaired so i just decided to bend it back to normal, however the pins were so thin and weak that it snapped right off while i was bending it back. i bought the camera in 2005 i think? not sure the model but at the time we bought it for about $1000+ is there any way to fix the pins a cheaper way? or is the only cheap way is to buy a new camera? thanks.
You might want to try going to a repair shop and asking how much it would cost to replace the reader, I found this by searching around google real quick: "It will cost you a couple of hundred dollars. The replacement socket is probably $10. It just takes a few hundred dollars worth of a technician's time to strip the camera apart, remove the old socket (lots of soldered contacts) and put in a new one. It's a very rare occurance, usually caused by forcing the card into the camera when it doesn't want to go. The only way the pins can be bent should be if the card is dirty and one of the contact holes is plugged up. Tens of thousands of photographers probably insert and remove the CF cards a million times a day. Once in a very long while one of them has a problem, but it's very rare. There are no statistics on how often a camera is attached to a PC via a cable, then pulled off the desk and crashes to the floor due to someone tripping over or accidentally pulling the cable. There are no statistics on how often you can plug and unplug the USB cable from the camera before you break the USB socket either." Hopefully this helps.
