I damaged my camera on a hike in the mountains last week. The damage is relatively trivial and will be easy to fix... IF I do it properly.

My best guess is that a drop of Gatorade dripped from my Camelback onto the combination shutter-release/zoom control button, and now the zoom control tab is stiff enough that the spring does not return it to the neutral position. (The zoom control is a tab that wraps around the shutter release button, you rotate it left or right to zoom out or in.)

No doubt if I just hold the camera under the hot water faucet for a while the sticky zoom tab will free up, but I suspect that such treatment might prove detrimental to future functionality.

How should I approach this problem?

tanstaafl.