Canon Powershot Problem

[yodamom]

Hi - I'm hoping someone here has some suggestions that I've not thought of. I have a Canon Powershot S1 that's been on my shelf with batteries and cf card removed. Wednesday I took it down, loaded fresh batteries and a cf card and turned it on. The viewfinder was totally black. I tried different batteries, tried replacing the small clock battery, and various other things. No change except now every once in a while I get color bands or stuff similar to static. FredG looked at it for a bit and got it to recognize and take one picture but then it went right back to black. The owner's manual makes no reference to a black viewfinder or display screen so no help there.

Has this happened to anyone else with a P&S? If so, how did you fix it? I'm also open to any suggestions anyone else has that may work.

Worst case is I have to take it to Canon and decide if it's worth fixing or just replace it. But thought I would check here before I went that route. Thanks in advance.

[gparr]

Is there a reset button on the camera, i.e., one of those that you activate with a paper clip or pen? That would put it back to factory settings. Also, is there a button battery, in addition to the regular batteries? If so, it might be dead. Replacing it should do the trick. You also could have Fred stand in a bucket of water with one hand on the camera and the other on a wall receptacle. That should provide sufficient power.
Gary

[agesilaus]

Canon had a recall for some PnS cameras because of LCD problems. You may want to search google for Canon recall or maybe the canonusa.com site to see if the S1 was one of the models.

[yodamom]

Gary - thanks for the suggestions - no reset button that I can find and the owner's manual doesn't have any info on one either. I replaced the button battery with no change in the display. I'll see if Fred's willing to try the water/outlet idea. :)

agesilaus - thanks for the info. I'll try both and see what I come up with.

Just checked the Canon website and the CCD sensor has issues which they are covering regardless of warranty status. Thanks for the info. Evidently they sent out some kind of consumer notice but I never rec'd it so didn't know about it. I'm going to call the number on the advisory tomorrow and see what they say.