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Wednesday, April 16, 2008
By Yokota Fritz
Sea Otter starts tomorrow, I have a press pass, and my camera stopped working today. I turned it on and ... nothing happened. I replaced the batteries, tried again and... nothing.
This camera is a newish Canon PowerShot 570 IS. I'm not a pro photographer, but I still own a Canon EOS film body and lenses. Still, I'd rather not pay for processing and printing, and I like to upload images to Flickr quickly.
Any suggestions? I'm kind of stuck and kind of broke right now. Help me Obi Wan, you're my only hope.
Oh, will anybody else be at Sea Otter? Should I do the Friday night alleycat?
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Comments:
Hi there,
Other than obvious things (batteries OK, batteries clean, memory card seated correctly, etc), make sure the shutter or cover over the lens is not jammed half-open. That quite often causes the camera to stop working. Good luck!
Used Canon Rebels should probably start going really cheap right now with everyone upgrading to the new Rebel Xsi. If you hurry, you might be able to get one off of Craigslist before Sea Otter.
I could possibly get an original Rebel out to you as a loaner, but its currently on loan to a friend in Sunnyvale. It's pretty klunky, at least by my current standards ;).
Do they still sell those "disposable" digital cameras at box retailers with photo departments? You might have to pay them to get the pics off the memory card, but I can't imagine that costing more than a dollar or two.
I have the exact same camera. Mine died too. Admittedly it suffered a knock a few hours before it died. But my other, older Canon has survived much worse. (I think the new Canons have a plastic case and the old ones were metal).
Any chance it's under warranty? They were pretty good about fixing mine.
One thing to consider--a camera that would have been top notch two years ago might be $50 at Fry's now. When you get a "real" camera again turn it over to kids or throw it in the bike bag for blog pix or whatever.
if you don't want to buy a digital camera in a hurry, shoot film.
you can get film developed quickly at the target on the north end of monterey, right off highway 1, and they can give you a CD with the images so you can upload to flickr. there's also a costco there which will do the same for less money.
Thanks for the tips all. I'll probably bring my film body. I think my Canon P&S might be under warranty still, but I'll need to dig that information up.
If the camera wont turned, you can still remove the memory card and plug it into a card reader. Most new computers come with a built in card reader these days. If you send the camera to a camera repair service center they might be able figure out what is wrong with it