Help: Repaired Canon Ixus 400 even worse :(

[stormfall]

Hi All,

hoping someone can give some sound advice on this. (I posted this on another forum but never even had any views on it )

My Canon Ixus 400 (over 2 yrs old) had a CCD that failed on me. I brought it into Canon Customer Service at Funan to have it repaired in March, and they replaced the "optical unit" without any charges.

Since I collected the camera from the customer service, I never used the camera until early April when I went to USA California for a holiday (aside for 2 photos of my study room which turned out okay). I had of course assumed that the camera was checked to ensure it was working.

When I went to America, I used the camera for the first day, and the photos were okay. But it became worse over day 2, and eventually - you can see the photo below - these were typical of over 90% of my photos.



Now when I'm on holiday I love taking photos, particularly because I tend to go to the national parks or places where natural beauty is at its most abundant. When to my horror, the one place that I've been dying to go to all my life - Yosemite National Park - had all its photos blurred like this, I was devastated!

It was not as if the photos are poorly taken. I know my camera well enough to know how to take good shots with it. I found that:-

- When using Manual function, the photos are always blur. I had the green rectangles (the focus rectangles) appear indicating that the photo are focussed, and the green light come on. I still get poorly focussed shots.
- When using Automatic function, the photos were initially sharp but became blur as more shots were taken.
- Close range photos and macro photos are okay, but scenary photos are impossible.
- Changing the various focusing functions (AiAf) did not help.

Now I take positive care of my camera. I've never dropped it nor treated it in any careless manner. I can only blame the blur images on the repair that Canon customer service did.

I have yet to bring it back to Canon repair centre because I'm still very upset that all my photos are damaged. IF my camera had never been repaired and the photos were damaged 'en route', then there's nothing I can say and I will be quite sad that my camera broke down whilst on holiday. But the fact is that the camera broke down after it was repaired .

Sure they can repair it again. But there's no guarantee that the next trip I bring it to, it'll become spoilt again. Effectively, the way I see it, they have damaged my camera. What should I do?

What would you suggest?

At the minimum, they should repair it but I can no longer feel certain that their repairs are assured. Should I:-

(a) Ask for an extended warranty of at least a year (because the next trip I'll be going is in April next year) bearing in mind their repair warranty is only 3 mths.
(b) Demand for a new camera or at least a new Ixus 400?
(c) Demand for a substantial discount for me to purchase a new canon camera? If so, how much would you ask for?

Am I being unreasonable to ask for any of (a) to (c)? I'll in all likelihood never go to Yosemite again, but I have been a Canon user since my first SLR and don't want to switch brands. But my confidence in the repair centre is at an all time low.

What would you do?

Any suggestions is deeply appreciated.

a fuming stormy

[USM]

Bro,

In order to determine whether it is camera problem or user issue, kindly bring your camera to Canon Digital Media Hub and look for the Walter. He will help to you to determine the problem accordingly before you go down to Canon Service Centre again for repair, etc.

[stormfall]

I've brought my camera to Norway (2004) and New England USA (2005), both times coming back with really nice photos, all sharp and focussed, so I doubt it's a user issue. I used all possible combinations of different settings and then uploaded the images to my notebook, all of which turned out badly focussed except for close shots.

Where is this Digital Media Hub?

[Canew]

Canon Digital Media Hub
750 Victoria St
Singapore 188062

[USM]

Bro, I am not claiming that it's due to user fault. Sometimes, it could be due to some settings that the user might accidentally set without realising it, etc.

Therefore, before anyone junp to the conclusion that it's the camera fault, why not let the expert check out for you? Walter is expert in all Canon PnS cameras. Let him assist you.

DMH is just on top of Bugis MRT, very accessible.

[tks]

A number of friends have complained to me about camera problems but 90% of the time, the issues have been traced to the user. These issues can be divided into two categories:

1. Camera in manual mode. This typically happens to guys. On holiday in Thailand, this guy insisted on manually setting his new Canon camera for every shot depending on lighting, sun, cloud condition etc. Most of his shots turned out bad. The rest of us simply used the Auto setting on our older Canon cameras and almost all our shots were good. Moral of the story: Unless you know what you are doing with the manual settings, just select the Auto setting. 95% of the time, the shots will be good. As USM pointed out, sometimes, the user does not realise that some or all of the settings are in manual mode. He may have played around with the settings and forgot to switch back.

2. Pressing the shutter button in one stroke. No matter how much I explain, I have friends (typically gals) who continue to press the shutter button the way they used to do for film cameras i.e. one swift stroke. Then they complain about shutter lag (a few seconds from the time they press to the time the camera goes off) and the picture being poorly focused. I need to keep reminding them that you need to do a half-press to enable the camera to focus etc.

stormfall, I don't mean to say that yours fall within one of the situations above. It could very well be one of the 10% cases where something is wrong with the camera. But I thought I should just share with you this observation for you to check.

Do bring your camera to the Digital Media Hub for a check and keep us informed. I have never heard of bad service from the Canon service centre so this will be interesting. If the camera is confirmed spoilt from the repairs, next time all of us better check our cameras after repair. But I think the CCD has nothing to do with focusing.

As for your demands (a) to (c), I seriously doubt they will give you. Certainly in Singapore, consumers don't usually get this type of rights. You seem like a foreigner, so maybe you will have better luck. Do keep us posted!

[stormfall]

Hi tks,

My wife brought the camera to the Funan repair centre and sent it in, without my knowledge. She thought they could repair it and get it back for me. I received a call from Canon and they told me that they could not find anything wrong with the camera. I'm sending the images I took to them to let them see how bad the focus was.

I appreciate your input on this, but I do need to stress that I'm very familiar with the camera's settings - ISO, Manual/Auto, Focusing modes etc. I use a mixture of automatic and manual modes most of the time, and have taken well over 2000 photos with my camera by now, and with the exception of the recent batch, all were taken with my mixture of auto/manual and manual in various settings. I do NOT click the shutter button in a swift motion. For these cases, I hold it down halfway until the focus rectangles are set, the green light is on, and I hear the standard beep indicating the photo is ready to be shot. When I found out that the shots were blurred, I took, at one location same landscape, all different settings, using a tripod. Automatic mode, Manual mode, Manual mode with all different ISOs and all different focus modes, landscape mode etc. All turned out blurred.

But now apparently the camera is behaving properly, according to the canon repair centre! The thing is - I can no longer trust that on my next trip away from Singapore, the camera will not fail me.

[windac]

Just wondering, have you turned on the long exposure mode by accident? If i dont remember wrongly, i have solve it before for my friend as it is activated from inside the menu function rather than on the mode dial. It causes blurred image as you go into long exposure at anytime till its off. And the flowing river does look like it, just my 2 cents.

[zcf]

anyway to do a hard reset (that's mean everything) then start again?

Sometime cannot rule out that the camera just fail, but unrelated to the earlier repair or user fault, especially you mentioned the camera initially was fine, but fail to get good photos half way onward. Sometime machines just fail after some use .

Let see what the service centre can do.