Two real "camera stories"

[btgc]

Yesterday colleague bough K100D Super with two lenses, covering 18-300 alltogether, as gift for his wife. She has Pentax compact but wants some "more real" camera from now. While playing at work with unpacked toys, checking ISOs and WB, colleague asked "hm, how to switch LCD on not to only display shots but also to see what will be taken". I quickly demonstrated with tube and paper sheet, why this doesn't work without second sensor, like Oly does.
- Does your wife knows this - you paid a grand and lost take-everywhere weight/dimensions and framing by means of LCD ?
- I'm not sure.

Some day I will ask what is going on. I really hope they will not compost this piece of technology in closet or sell it "mint, like new" for half.

Another case - today in lab to drop off scans, mom and daug' were showing eos30D with big flash unit to guy at counter, he's good at hardware too. They told that at Canon dealership some time ago they had "top cover with flash pins" replaced, as "they are especially prone to malfunction and this is single unit to be changed". Really, flash didn't fired, at all. Guy installed set of fresh batteries, and voila, problem solved. He sold them set of rechargeables.

We all wondered if first repair weren't another "Canon can you" story. Some day I'll ask how this proceeded, as both ladies are permanent customers.

 

[pvdhaar]

Another case - today in lab to drop off scans, mom and daug' were showing eos30D with big flash unit to guy at counter, he's good at hardware too. They told that at Canon dealership some time ago they had "top cover with flash pins" replaced, as "they are especially prone to malfunction and this is single unit to be changed". Really, flash didn't fired, at all. Guy installed set of fresh batteries, and voila, problem solved. He sold them set of rechargeables.

We all wondered if first repair weren't another "Canon can you" story. Some day I'll ask how this proceeded, as both ladies are permanent customers.

I can tell you one thing, this isn't just a Canon problem. My Nikon behaves the same. Camera shows batteries to be full, but can't talk without problems to the flash when that battery is on its last legs. Horrendous to troubleshoot.. some things work (flash, ittl), others don't (speedlight AF assist pattern, some speedlight zoom settings)..

Worst thing is that some combinations of AF settings and custom functions between camera and flash give that exact same behaviour; so that's where I was looking first. Makes one go berserk in no time flat. Took me a day to figure out what the real problem was.. and I had another body and flash to swap around with to help tracking the cause..

Grrrrr....

 

[btgc]

Interesting case, Peter ! I'll tell this further, maybe this helps that ladies. Yeah, like in software, those irregular condition-based bugs are worst.