The Canon EOS 1100D was offered to me because it—like many items in the $5-bin—was one step from the garbage. It didn’t have a lens mounted on it for that price, but the matching lens for it—the Canon EF-S 18-55 mm f/3.5-5.6—was lying in the bin too. Before I took the rig I asked why it was so cheap. It seems the person who owned it came from a damp climate and the camera had repeatedly failed for moisture reasons.
Being a cheerful collector I figured I would get a lens and at least a battery out of the deal, so I pressed on. It didn’t hurt to share the risk with my grandson who was as eager as I was to find a real bargain!
The grandson went home pleased as I was that the camera—once the battery was charged up and a SD card was inserted—worked fine.
It is quite an impressive camera. Known as a Kiss X50 in Japan and a Rebel T3 in North America it was
introduced Feb. 7, 2011. It is an ABS-C 22.2 x 14.7 mm sensor SLR that gives a 1.6X conversion factor to its focal length compared to the 35 mm focal lengths. It was the cheapest camera in the line, yet it improved on earlier models and stole functions from more expensive cameras. The focus spots increased from 7 to 9, it has 63 exposure calculation areas and had ISO’s that ranged from 100-6400.
I took the camera to the EPHS evening shoot and captured over 150 shots with no problems. That isn’t entirely accurate, as shooting a fire engine blasting by resulted in some impressive blurring, but that could of been handled if there had been more time to play with the controls.
In some ways this story is more about managing your feelings. I took the camera out to my farm. It had been raining off-and-on for two days and the driveway showed signs of flowing water. I attempted to take a ground level shot of a mushroom and the camera died in my hands. First the screen image developed a pattern that looked like back-lit sand. Then the camera wouldn’t shoot. I stopped trying to shoot with it and brought it home.
From the heights of getting a real bargain for $10 to having a nice but useless camera can ruin your whole life. I was still sleeping, eating and grinning at jokes, but I felt gutted. It is hard to explain to others who don’t invest so much of themselves in their activities, but most collectors can sympathize with what I was going through.
I tried leaving the camera in sunlight, to see if heating it up would dry it out. I don’t recommend that looking back at how hot it got. As a matter of fact, it says plainly in the instructions not to leave the camera on a car’s dashboard. The battery could blow if heated enough, and the camera’s integrated circuits will fail under enough heat.
I placed the camera on a just-used oven’s stove top. That was better, because it was warm but cooling.
I took the lens off to let air circulate inside the mirror box. I placed the body various ways up. I left the battery compartment empty and open. Things did get a little better as the camera did start to display its normal image of the camera’s settings on the back screen. I could even focus and shoot.
But when it came time to save the image to the SD card the red “in use” light would light and just stay lit. Yes, I did try various SD cards to see if the dying-while-writing had scrambled the poor thing. No satisfaction there as the broken camera’s card worked in other cameras, and other cards I knew worked still wouldn’t work in the broken camera.
Finally I took the camera’s battery out and simply left the camera alone for several days. My thinking was the camera had been working after sitting in the bargain bin, so maybe leaving it for awhile to settle down might correct its problem. The first time I put the battery back and shot the camera it worked fine, and has been working fine ever since.
Just as it is hard to express how down in the dumps I was, it is equally hard to share with you how successfully elevated my mode became. Since getting the camera back up, I have suffered losing a tooth, being jumped by a spider in the middle of a bathroom visit and days of rain. Yet I am happy...or at least at peace with how my life is going.
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