Nikon D5100 Teardown
Teardown
Teardowns provide a look inside a device and should not be used as disassembly instructions.
Featured Guide
This guide has been found to be exceptionally cool by the iFixit staff.
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It seems as though all the hot new electronics these days are tablet-this, phone-that. Frankly, our engineers had enough. Their spudgers were getting soft; we needed to do something that would present a *challenge* and get them sharp again -- none of the take-off-a-display-to-find-a-motherboard baloney.
We knew exactly where to turn. We've done a set of Nikon D70 repair guides in the past, and we saw how difficult it was to take apart an SLR. What better way to infuse a bit of fun in our teardowns than taking apart another SLR?
So, in the name of science and all that is right in this world, let's see what's inside the brand-new Nikon D5100!
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Edit Step 1
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Nikon D5100 Teardown
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We here at iFixit are very fond of cameras. It is our pleasure to provide our fans with what we believe will be an amazing teardown. Without any further ado, we present the D5100 teardown.
The first thing we noticed about the D5100 was that the body was nowhere near the same heft as our standard workhorse camera, the D90. It just felt... punier.
And then we took some photos with it.
The photos came out amazing. The colors were crisp, and we could even get away with usable (albeit super-grainy) ISO 6400 shots, which is certainly not the case with the D90's ISO 3200.
For those who need a brush up on the definition of ISO, click here.
Edit Step 2 ¶
The flippy rotating screen is very useful -- especially if you're trying to record yourself for YouTube.
Unlike the D90, the top of the camera does not include an informational LCD. Instead, we get the rotating mode selector on the right.
The specs:
16.2 MP DX-format CMOS sensor
4 FPS continuous shooting
3.0 inch, 921,000-dot display
1920x1080 recording at up to 30 FPS
11-point AF (auto-focus) system
Edit Step 3 ¶
First thing's first: take out the battery. We don't want any electric juice running through the D5100's veins while we're taking it apart.
Especially not to the large-and-in-charge 330µF flash capacitor.
The 7.4 V 1030 mAh EN-EL14 Li-ion battery is used by the D5100, D3100, and the COOLPIX P700. Sadly, it's not compatible with other cameras in the Nikon lineup, such as the D90 and D7000.
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The camera has roughly 4 billion screws holding it together. We'll be skipping a lot of the "unscrewing this screw" pictures (like the ones shown in this step) in order to keep the teardown interesting.
Trust us, after the 50th screw, it gets boring.
As if exposed screws weren't enough, Nikon also chose to hide screws underneath covers and the rubberized thumb grip.
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After a good twenty #00 Phillips screws were removed from the perimeter of the device, we managed to separate the rear cover.
A ribbon cable for the rear control buttons and a hefty 40 pin cable responsible for transmitting information to the rear display still attached the rear cover to the rest of the camera.
Fun fact: to eliminate the complexities of a slip ring on the rotating rear display, its motion is limited to 180 degrees.
Edit Step 7 ¶
Front view of the motherboard. (High-res version of the motherboard, click here):
Nikon EXPEED 2 EI-154 1051 Z05 image processor
Samsung K4T1G164QF-BCE7 1Gb DDR2-800 SDRAM (total of 3 Gb = 384 MB)
MXIC MX29GL128EHXFI-90G 128 Mb parallel flash memory
Rear view of the motherboard. (High-res version, click here):
Toshiba TMP19A44FEXBG low-power microcontroller
Nikon EI-155 M4L1BA00 00151044
Nikon NHHS-2 049M8
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