Digital Cameras Are Everywhere These Days

A quality camera at a reasonable price is not hard to find today because every electronics manufacturer has their own range and the competition is fierce.

Unlike traditional cameras which used light sensitive film to capture images, digital cameras use its own set of light sensing technology to convert the world we see into a digital file at the touch of a button. This file is then stored to the camera’s internal memory or more often than not to a memory card that you will have to purchase in order to expand the camera’s picture storing capabilities.

The Cost of Storage Is Cheaper Than Ever Before

Most manufacturers give measly little built-in memory with their cameras because they want to keep the costs of their camera as low as possible so as to ward off the competition, and in the past memory cards with decent storage capacities were expensive.

Thankfully the price of memory cards for digital cameras has come down drastically.

You can now get 1GB or more for under a tenner, which is enough for at least a few 100 photos.

With a memory card installed you can usually just remove the card from your camera and insert it into your PC or laptop if it comes with a memory card reader, or as is more usually the case you can use the supplied USB cable to plug your camera straight into your computer to transfer images.

However, the one thing that you should be aware of in relation to memory cards in digital photography is that there is not one standard format of memory card that will work in all cameras.

Some manufacturers differ in their preference, so before you buy a camera it’s essential that you find out what type of memory card it requires.

Different Types of Memory Card

The most commonly used memory card format is the SD card, used by Samsung, Kodak, Panasonic, Pentax and many others. This means that it’s fairly easy to find cheap SD memory cards with good storage capacities either online or in an electronics store that will work instantly with your digital camera.

But beware…there has been a recent development in SD technology which has produced SDHC cards, with storage sizes of 4GB right up to 32GB. Most older cameras which take SD cards won’t be able to take advantage of these increased capacity SDHC cards, so check a new camera before you buy to see if it is compatible.

Sony cameras require a Sony Memory Stick, which is of course Sony’s own memory card format, and Olympus use XD cards which differ in size and shape from SD cards.

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What To Do When Your Beloved Camera Develops A Fault

My Canon 350D SLR broke the other week. I could take a few photos, but then it would put a black line across the top of my photos, suggest there was no battery power, and flash at me error 99.

With no ability to take further photos, I want to share with you my experience in repairing my camera and getting to the bottom of error 99, which it turns out is a common error!

What is Error 99?

Error 99 is a common error that basically means there is something wrong with one of the various processes involved in taking a photo. This could be:

• no battery power
• faulty writing to the memory card
• the lens not being corrected
• shutter problems

Error 99 points to a problem with a third party accessory. Therefore try the following fixes before thinking there is something more seriously wrong with the camera itself.

Quick Camera Fixes

Since error 99 is caused by abnormal operation, try the following fixes:

• turning the camera on and off
• changing memory cards
• changing batteries
• changing lenses
• rubbing the gold contacts on the lens and camera body with a pencil eraser (explained well here)

If not of those work then I suggest taking your camera into a repair shop. As it turned out, my error 99 was pointing to a faulty shutter - supposedly they have a life span - and needed to be fixed by a technician.

Camera Repair Shops in London

Helpful London SLR Repair Shops

I’ve found Sendean Cameras in Soho and Fixation to be really helpful. They will look at your camera for free and will try to fix your camera ASAP i.e. in less than a week.

Other repair shops, although friendly and helpful, were charging to send the camera off to an authorised camera repair dealer.

Canon Repair Centre

If you want to go directly to Canon you must send your camera directly to the service centre. I’ve phoned them twice and am no nearer to knowing where to post it to. They will charge you £30 to investigate the problem and supposedly it can take 1 or 2 months to complete the repair.

Have you recently had your camera repaired? Did it go OK?

Please leave a comment.

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