The Lazy Rando Blog…

Canon S500 - my favourite camera!

I’ve used this Canon S500 for many years of faithful service.  It’s been all over the world with me and has taken thousands of great photos. I’ve upgraded to a newer Canon SD870IS, but I prefer my older S500.  It just takes amazing photos – especially on the bike.  The ergonomics mean one handed operation while pedaling is relatively easy so I get nice action shots.  Modern cameras are quite sophisticated and I find that often the extra bells and whistles can actually make it harder to get the shot you want.

I was sad, but not overly surprised when my old camera started to malfunction.  It had seen a lot of action and didn’t owe me anything at all.  I put it away thinking I might repair it, but a new generation Canon point and shoot was only $250 and repairs might easily exceed this amount.  I let the S500 sit in a corner of my office for months while I pondered what to do.  I used my SD870IS in the meantime and it takes good pictures, but I have to try much harder to get the shot I want and I throw away a significantly greater number of photos than my older Canon.

When the screen on my newer Canon started to get a large number of bad pixels I took it in for warranty service.  I brought along my SD500 figuring they could at least give me a quote on repairs.  As expected they accepted my newer camera for repair under warranty.  I was pretty shocked when they let me know that they could repair my older Canon and would do so for free since there had been a service bulletin issued for the SD500 identifying the problem I had as a defect in the sensor.  Keep in mind my S500 is at least 5 years old and well out of warranty coverage.

Not only did they repair both my cameras for free, but they shipped them directly back to me within 14 days at no cost so I didn’t have to trek across town to the repair centre.  The paperwork that came with both cameras identified the cause of my camera issues as moisture damage.  If this is correct I suspect the problem is I often ride with a camera inside the pocket of a rain jacket.  When I’m working hard the inside can get sweaty so perhaps that high humidity environment was what happened?

I can’t describe how stoked I am to get my S500 back.  It’s like in the movies when you think the hero died in the plane crash just over the horizon, but then a while later they stroll into the scene all smoky and beat up to save the day.  Welcome back little buddy and thanks Canon!…=-)

PS – I owe Canon a little plug after this excellent service.  Pretty much every picture of mine you see on this blog and on my Flickr photostream was taken with a Canon.