Off topic

Well......

Who's dumber: Me or Canon?

I have a Nikon Coolpix 880. An early 3 megapixel consumer camera. It takes good pictures, although it is slow.

Anyhow, I borrowed one of my wife's Compact Flash cards when mine got full. Next time I tried to use the camera - it was dead. That is, won't turn on, doesn't show an error code, no lights, no noises dead. I changed the battery. I tried the AC adaptor. My camera was dead.

I'd rather not invest in a camera now (when there is so much frame-building equipment yet to buy), otherwise it would be a good excuse to start shopping.

This has slowed down my framebuilding photography - as can be seen by this site. It's also put me out of the photo loop in some other circumstances.

Fortunately my wife has a nice digital camera (it was her CF card that I borrowed), made by Canon. It's newer than mine, has more m-pixels, and features and shots faster (good for the kids and dog - speaking of which I should post a picture of Doc). But she doesn't really want it in the shop, and as our only camera I don't either.

Anyhow, I got out my dead camera before diner. I tried fooling around some more to see if anything would get it going. I tried removing and replacing the CF card thinking it might not be seating correctly. After several tries, I got an error code on the upper display one time. Then nothing more. More muttering and fooling around.

Then I did it. I pulled the card and put another in. That was it! Voila, it works. I looked at the card that was pulled out - it's Canon branded. While it works fine in any of the card readers I've tried, and in my wife's camera, it kills my camera. Now, given the difference in ages between the card and my camera, I'm confident that Nikon did nothing to prevent Canon cards from working. But, this is the free card that came with my wife's camera, and it appears that Canon has designed it to disable any non-Canon camera in which it may be placed. Dirty pool!!!!!! Shame on Canon!!!!!

But, maybe some of you will be spared the aggravation if you know that this sort of nonsense is going on.

Cheers,

RG