A gaping mouth was all I had when my 3 year ol’ Canon Powershot S1 IS’s LCD/EVF went blank all of a sudden a few months ago. Nothing could be seen, clicking the picture button resulted in blank pics. Googling about it revealed an advisory by Canon, stating that it is a known issue with the CCD image sensor. Canon impressed me by that notice when they said they will fix it for free, even for cameras out of warranty period, and will also pay to-and-fro shipping. Contacting canon support in India (support, in India? Is that a joke?) resulted in just their ignorance about any such advisory.

Undeterred, I sent the camera to the land of dreams (USA) with a friend, e-mailed the Canon USA support at [email protected] with my predicament, and they promptly sent shipping labels to my friend. So far so good. But a couple of months went by, with no word from them. Customer support told me they are awaiting parts. Sad I was that day .

One fine day, I just checked the status of the return shipping label on a whim, and found that they had shipped my camera back. I was disheartened thinking it had been returned unrepaired, but then my friend called to let me know that they had sent some other camera back. I thought they might have sent some low price, refurbished camera, but atleast a working camera is better than a non-working one.

Today my friend came back from the US, and what do we have? A brand spanking new Canon Powershot S5 IS (8 MP, 12x Optical zoom, flip out and twist LCD). Yessir . Here is a pic of my new baby (Ah, the irony, the clicking powerhouse has been clicked with a low-res phone camera, but anyways.)

Canon_powershot_s5_is

Note: Contact canon immediately if you are facing the same problem and your camera is one of these:

  • Camcorders: ZR60, ZR65 MC, ZR70 MC, ZR80, ZR85, ZR90, ELURA 40 MC, ELURA 50
  • Digital Cameras A60, A70, A75, A300, A310, S230, SD100, SD110, A40(), A80(), A85(), A95(), S1 IS(), S60(), S200(), S330(), S400(), S410(), S500(*)