Digital Elphs and Gremlins
12 06 2008My Canon Digital Elph SD450 finally gave up the ghost on Sunday. The dreaded Er18 message came up and i could no longer retract the lens. I have since found out (from reading Internet reviews) this is a common problem with Digital Elphs. Canon offered a replacement refurbished SD750 for $100. I also had to buy new underwater housing for the new camera- $160. I bet some readers are thinking, why not replace with an Olypmus Pentax or Stylus. Here are my reasons:
(1) I have three friends with the Pentex camera. Two of these camera have suffered condensation in the camera body. If I bought a Pentax and I tookit in the ocean (as i often do ) and salt water infiltrated the body, my camera would be toast. Several reviews I’ve read indicate that newer Pentax models are more susceptible to leakage than on the older models.
(2) The reviews of the Olympus camera are great, except that the video quaility is poor. It records only 15 seconds of video per push of the button and it records in lower resolution-I confirmed this with the customer service. In addition, the sound quaility is allegedly poor.
I’m sticking with the extremely water-tight, robust Canon Digital Elph…I just hope the Er18 gremlins stay away! Comments that agree or are contrary to what i’ve written here welcomed.
Hi Kate,
I saw the Er18 message on my Elph about a month ago. I recharged the battery and it seemed to work fine (I took a few pictures at home with it), but then the error came back as soon as I tried to take pictures on the river (doh!). I haven’t made time to read up on the problem yet, though. Do you know if the refurbished replacement is available to all? I’m sure that mine is out of warranty at this point…
Cheers,
Ryan
Just found this (a great link on the E18 message).
Hey Ryan
Thanks for sharing your information and sorry to hear of your troubles too. I tried suggestions on the website below about dealing with the E18 message, but none of them worked.
http://blogs.yucs.org/~dwallach/2004/08/canon_e18_error_repair_instruc.html
My camera was 2.5 years old and I believe it was out of warrenty. They should replace your camera under the E18 scheme too. I truly beleive that there should be a recall on the elph series because this issue is all too common.