TimsBlog

Or welcome to my breakdown. Either way its a bad bad Alice Copper nod. I woke up this morning to find out my Canon ixus55 or sd450 was broke. Did I smash another LCD screen? No Did I drop it? No. what I got was an E18 (error). After a google search I found out this is a common I mean way too common problem with all the compact canons. It means the retractable lens is stuck (open or shut )

It powers up says E18 then powers down.

Well good thing I sent my canon warranty card in right? Wrong thats the big problem (besides the poor lens mechanism) Everyone has the same story. Contact canon, then send it to canon, then canon says its not under warranty and they will fix it for $150( or ship it back to you broke for another $20) Of course that fixed for $150 means they send you a refurbished one. This is a $250 to $275 camera for fuck sake. Lots of talk about a joint lawsuit on this issue. Most of the compact line canon offers has a retractable lens.

Totally blows. I mean its an excellent camera for the quality of the pics and the size. Both are just more than you could ask for. The size might be the down fall here. Since I keep it in my pocket (LCD inward) I think the retracted lens was getting banged and “knocked” off track. So having a nice camera that fits in your pocket might not be a good thing after all.

What to do, what to do. Replace it with a new one or go for the SLR I should and wanted to buy. I’m buying the SLR.

I’ve had experience with film SLR cameras so the control overload would not be an issue. I mean once you know where all the controls are on the SLR its like having a big point and shoot camera. I personally only shoot with 2 lens for maybe 3 different types of shots. Shooting with a 24mm to 35mm and a 50mm. I don’t use telephoto lens so I can’t be that lens whore you see a lot. My understanding is there is a Lens Focal Length Conversion of 1.6x which means I need to buy a 15mm lens to get a 24mm. And so on.

So I’m going to do double the research on this camera to avoid the E18 error surprise. Heres what I’m considering and most likely will buy.

Canon EOS 30D

20mm lens (32mm)

35mm lens (56mm)