Over the years we've had a few digital cameras. We always take care of them, they've never been dropped, accidentally ended up in a swimming pool or had wine spilt on them as I've seen happen with others. So why is it they all end up useless after a year or two?
Our latest camera has been showing signs of giving up over the last months. When we go to view the photos we sometimes get an error message saying the card is empty, but they upload on to the computer. Once we've uploaded we delete images from the card, only to find out later that they hadn't gone and duplicate themselves in our pictures file. Nothing major, just annoying and a sign that all isn't well.
Last week P took a party of kids from school to Granada to draw, paint and photograph examples of Islamic design as the foundation of an art project. He took lots of photos but when he went to upload them onto his computer it said the card had not been formatted and if he formatted it now he'd lose any pictures already on it.
It seems to me that digital cameras have a very short life span. In our experience they start to become unpredictable after a couple of years and shortly after that unusable.
We tend to buy middle price cameras so I don't think the problem is we're being cheapskates. That said, we're thinking of splashing out a bit and buying a digital SLR but nervous that the extra cost would end up a waste of money if this too has a short life span.
If you're reading this and have a digital camera please leave your thoughts in a comment because I'd be interested to know whether other people have found the same thing happen to them.
Thanks.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
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2 comments:
We have a digital SLR and haven't had any problems. We bought it second hand too - it's about 3 years old.
Could you get one with an extended warranty? That way if anything weird happens you can just send it back...
We had a Canon PowerShot S1IS for about five years (it cost about $450 USD in 2002) and it crapped out because the image sensor wasn't designed for extreme heat, as we tend have here in Texas. But Canon knew of this problem and replaced it free of charge - all we had to do was contact the company. We got an upgraded version (PowerShot S5) out of the deal and it didn't cost a penny. It's been about a year and so far, so good. It looks like the prices have come down significantly, as an S5 runs about $250 USD presently. It might be worth contacting the company, as sometimes, the problems you experience are known issues and the company *might* stand behind it's product long enough for you to get a repair or upgrade out of the deal.
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