My workhorse Canon A70 finally died. It was on life support and I pulled the plug or more accurately I shorted it out.
It all started about a week ago when I noticed something rattling around inside the camera. I thought this was odd but didn't think much of it. Then the zoom jammed with an E18 error. I noticed it wasn't rattling anymore so I figured what ever was loose was jamming the zoom. So I smacked it around a bit and it started working again. I decided it was time to dissect it. After finding some disassembly instructions online, in Estonian mind you, I had it apart and found that my mysterious loose part was a screw. Well that can't be good but what the hell it still works right? So I put it back together, put some batteries in and... nothing. Hmmm... well I'll take the batteries out and wow they're warm. Uh oh. Oh no, whats that smell?! Yep, I had let the magic smoke out of the camera. It was dead.
I was sad for a while but then I realized I got to go shopping for a new camera! So I bought myself a Canon A720IS. It's an 8 mega pixel, which is a lot overkill but it is the same basic design so I'm still familiar with it.
I went from the A70:
To the A720IS:
The things I like most are how it feels in my hand, the huge 2.5" LCD, optical image stabilization, facial recognition and my basic familiarity with it. It is also much quicker than the old camear. I looked at some smaller cameras but they were lost in my hands. Also I felt that they would get lost in general. I'm also amazed with the video quality. I've uploaded one to google video and the compression really doesn't show the video the way it should but you can definately tell the difference between the two cameras.
A70
A720
A downside to the camera is it uses SD and not CF so I can't reuse my old cards but that's minor.