Well, this is just my luck.

I was running around a health care facility in St. Paul Minnesota recently, on my first shoot with my new Z5. I shoot using a Varizoom VZ-Rock mounted on the pan bar of my Bogen 503HDV/351MVB sticks. Near the end of the day, we set up a location and went to plug in the LANC mini plug into the Z5 and it just fell back out of the jack. Put it in again, fell out. Took a closer look and discovered the tip was missing. I just figured it got whacked by the tripod during a move. Finished the shoot, sent the VZ-Rock back to Varizoom for warranty repair, no problem.

I got the LANC controller back in the mail yesterday. Of course, I went to go plug it into the camera and the plug won't go all the way into the socket ... turns out the tip is still inside the camera! I spent about 2 hours trying to remove it using a variety of small tubes, even a drop of superglue on a Q-tip stick. No luck.

Is it possible that the retainer clip inside the camera jack was tight enough to pull off the tip of the plug?

I called Sony Warranty Repair for info, their only suggestion was to box and ship the camera to Teaneck, NJ for evaluation. Before I go that route, do any of you have suggestions or experience for an easier/quicker solution?

Sam, considering how tiny that piece is, how deep it's in there
and how delicate a camcorder is, in all honesty I think the Sony
service center is really your best and safest bet. Might as well
get a clean & check while it's there.

Super Glue in the LANC port?

Yes, a tiny dot on the end of a toothpick, ballpoint pen ink tube or some such utensil because the bare end of the mini plug tip points back toward the opening of the jack. No worries - I didn't use enough to come off in the jack, nor was it enough to retrieve the broken part.

had this problem once. There is no way to get back from the way it was inserted because the missing tube is supposed to push the contacts.
I solved that by dismantling the device and pushing the tip from the rear, but i was lucky that the socket was not totally closed. and it was a 3.5mm plug (headphone) not a 2.5 Lanc