Canon A420 camera

Thanks, I have installed it on my machine and will send a copy to the friend who was having trouble with the card reader. I suspect the problem will still be that her card reader needs its own software in the computer.

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~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
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It was - but the price was right.

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~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
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That seems to be the most likely cause. I have found a firm that will repair it (with a guarantee) for £72, so that is my least-bad option.

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~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
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"Meathead Blowhard"

** Fuck off - IMBECILE !!!!!!!!!!

"Adrian Tuddenham"

** So it is NOT a 3 year old camera at all but may be up to 13 years old.

Just that YOU have owned it for 3 years.

.... Phil

"Adrian Tuddenham"

** Seeing as cold temp caused the problem - try warming the camera ( to say 40C with warm air ) and operating the shutter over and over and tapping on the lens assembly.

Cost you nothing and you got nothing to lose.

..... Phil

Have you looked at the price and spec of a Canon replacement? e.g:-

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Geo

Is that OOOPSIE! in Phil-Speak? :)

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Live Fast, Die Young and Leave a Pretty Corpse

That does look pretty good as long as I can get the pictures out of it.

It says it will take SD cards, so my external reader might work with it. (I seem to remember some memory card size limitation on either the reader or the camera, can't remember which.)

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"Geo"

** The A495 is no replacement for the A420 - since it completely lacks an optical viewfinder.

The A420 has one with inbuilt zoom that actually tracks the main lens - without an optical viewfinder, such cameras become near useless in daylight because the LCD screen is washed out.

I have owned an A430 ( near identical to the A420 ) for the last 4 years.

... Phil

Given all your described sympthoms I would say it is the CCD sensor starting to fail. It is showing some dark rows across the pictures, typical of problems with these sensors. These dark rows make the camera think the picture is darker than it is and increases exposure to compensate. When you see the picture on its LCD live it is not analyzing all the rows but a small fraction and these failing rows have no impact at all, so it appears to work properly. But when you take the photo it processes all the information.

I think the sensor will have to be replaced (if worth) but meanwhile you can lower the exposure manually as you did as a workaround. Consider also that overexposed photos may be corrected to some degree with an editing program that can correct brightness/contrast. I get quite good results with MS Office photo editor, my camera has a tendency to take pictures too dark mainly under artificial light and I fix some of them before printing.

Sorry if it sounds like bad news.

"Jeroni Paul is a TROLL"

Given all your described sympthoms I would say it is the CCD sensor starting to fail.

** Shame how it works fine when viewing on the LCD display.

.... Phil

That sounds quite possible - especially as the sensor had been exposed to very cold conditions for the first time and I now discover that sensor faults were not unknown in early versions of this model.

I've sent it away for repair and the quote was for a 'replacement lens unit' (which presumably includes the sensor).

Most pictures were so severely 'crushed' that no recovery was possible - I did manage to use one but it was a struggle.

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~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
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www.poppyrecords.co.uk