Somewhere between prying open the cover to the blinding flash of light that came out of the camera body I started wondering if it was even possible to fix my camera. I had been trying to remove a protective ring around the camera barrel mechanism in my little compact camera when I must have made contact with the capacitor for the flash unit. The next thing I new there was a click, a blinding flash of light, and a little glow from the camera body itself. I stopped in mid-motion for a few seconds mentally processing what had just happened.
I was holding a screwdriver.
I had just taken off the camera housing.
I had found a way behind the wires to the stuck camera barrel.
I was trying to free a metal ring around the barrel.
My next thought was:
damn! After that I put all the screws back together and pressed the power button. This time the camera barrel did not move and the screen only said: E18. Oh that's bad. Very bad.
Somewhere from Saturday night to Sunday morning the camera barrel of my Canon compact had gotten jammed and would no longer close all of the way. I have no idea what got into it or how to solve the problem. I looked up online that this was common and likely some debris had gotten inside the barrel. I tried jiggling things around like the instructions suggested but nothing was seeming to work. You could press the On/Off button and the barrel would extend, but the focus was badly out of whack. And after the mishap I described above the camera barrel was pretty much frozen.
After cursing things I started to run through my options. I can try to get it fixed, but that will cost probably at least $80 and take a week. I can buy the exact same model for around $250. Or I can do a mini upgrade to a more recent model for $290---also remember that I'd have to buy a new battery. Any which way I look at it, I'm screwed.
Going without a camera is not an option. I am about to go off on another trip and not having a camera would be a tragedy knowing how much of a shutterbug I am. I could get a different brand of camera, but unless it uses SD memory cards then I'd have 3 GB of very useless memory cards and I'd have to buy new xD or memory sticks.
Gah. What to do. What to do.
