My camers is stylus 500 but this was nearest description I could find

dropping of camera, especially on the lense side, gives damages to the lense barrels and their pivots. The moving barrels have small pin like projections which move into the grooves cut into the exterior barrel. when dropped either these pins get broken or they come out from the grooves due to the heavy jerk. If disaligned these can be set back to their normal position without much labour charges but if broken the whole assembly is replaced thus causing lot of payment.

try poking a thin object between one of the grooves and wiggle it abit,thats what i done with same prob and it worked..crude but effective