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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