Camera malfunctions

[Al]

Very nice photo #2.  Nice camera working real good.  Not a bad photographer either! 

Thanks,
Al

[dkerr24]

While I don't do it 100% of the time, I rarely remove the card from the camera. Plug USB cable into camera and computer, turn on camera and a new hard drive shows up. Move (not copy) photos to computer, turn camera off, unplug. Card ready for another round.

Saves wear and tear on the removable disk, eliminates any chance of bending pins on the card socket, or doing something the manual says you shouldn't do.

Unless you're on some long trip where you need to swap disks, it's pretty hard to fill up a 4gb card over a weekend and I shoot RAW + lightest JPG compression so I run about 25 mb aggregate per image. But, even that contingency is covered by dumping to a laptop or external pocket hard drive.

Good advice on leaving the card in the camera as much as possible, using the mini-USB cable to connect to the PC. 

SD cards do seem quite fragile, especially the ones that snap in half to make a USB connector.

[jeffblaylock]

While I don't do it 100% of the time, I rarely remove the card from the camera. Plug USB cable into camera and computer, turn on camera and a new hard drive shows up. Move (not copy) photos to computer, turn camera off, unplug. Card ready for another round.

Saves wear and tear on the removable disk, eliminates any chance of bending pins on the card socket, or doing something the manual says you shouldn't do.

Unless you're on some long trip where you need to swap disks, it's pretty hard to fill up a 4gb card over a weekend and I shoot RAW + lightest JPG compression so I run about 25 mb aggregate per image. But, even that contingency is covered by dumping to a laptop or external pocket hard drive.

Good advice on leaving the card in the camera as much as possible, using the mini-USB cable to connect to the PC.

SD cards do seem quite fragile, especially the ones that snap in half to make a USB connector.

Keep in mind that the SDHC cards, which look and feel exactly like SD cards, require a special USB card reader. Fortunately, one came with one of the cards I bought, otherwise I'd have to use the camera exclusively to load photos to the 'puter. I swap cards fairly often because of the volume of photos I take (I took 250 of my dog playing with another dog one evening), especially when I'm on a walkabout (1,500 in Yosemite and the Bay Area earlier this month). I keep them in a LowePro hard case to store them when I'm on the trail. It holds up to 8 cards.

[RichardM]

On to another issue. After taking over 3000 pictures in the 18 months of ownership (warranty was only for the usual one year), my Canon A720IS has gone on the fritz. Yesterday at my daughter's pre-school graduation ceremony the camera shake warning kept coming on.  Whenever it did, the resulting photo was out of focus. Granted, the lighting conditions were not the best and I was primarily having to shoot with one hand, but the camera has never had problems doing that before. No settings had been changed, nor has it been damaged that we know of. I was shooting using the automatic settings with "shoot only" IS mode. This morning I tried a few shots around the house with different IS settings and it didn't seem to matter how still I held the camera. For example, focusing on the dining room table in slightly low light it would warn of camera shake and insufficient exposure level. Moving the focus up a few feet to the wall behind it and the warnings went away. Seems like the sensor or something is having problems. Short of just buying another camera, what are my options? About how much would a photo shop charge to check it out and/or make repairs? I hate it when my toys stop working.

[Casa Grande]

On to another issue. After taking over 3000 pictures in the 18 months of ownership (warranty was only for the usual one year), my Canon A720IS has gone on the fritz. Yesterday at my daughter's pre-school graduation ceremony the camera shake warning kept coming on. Whenever it did, the resulting photo was out of focus. Granted, the lighting conditions were not the best and I was primarily having to shoot with one hand, but the camera has never had problems doing that before. No settings had been changed, nor has it been damaged that we know of. I was shooting using the automatic settings with "shoot only" IS mode. This morning I tried a few shots around the house with different IS settings and it didn't seem to matter how still I held the camera. For example, focusing on the dining room table in slightly low light it would warn of camera shake and insufficient exposure level. Moving the focus up a few feet to the wall behind it and the warnings went away. Seems like the sensor or something is having problems. Short of just buying another camera, what are my options? About how much would a photo shop charge to check it out and/or make repairs? I hate it when my toys stop working.

Because of the complexities of cameras these days, a traditional camera repair shop may or may not be up to par.  You need to contact Canon directly:

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=SupportIndexAct

[jeffblaylock]

I would take out the battery and SD card. Then make sure you have the latest firmware from Canon. Clear (or better yet erase and reformat) the SD card. Put the battery in. Then look in the manual to see how to reset all functions to factory specs. Then put the SD card in and reformat it using the camera. If that collectively doesn't nip it, then you are probably in need of repair/replacement.