Troubleshooting digital cameras

[JDArt]

Today's digital cameras are liberating. You can snap hundreds of pictures and "develop" only those worth keeping, discarding the rest. You thereby save money on film and potentially development costs. But that doesn't mean picture-taking today is trouble-free. In fact, digital cameras can pose problems more vexing than film cameras ever did. Read on for some solutions to common digital camera problems.

Q: Sometimes my digital camera freezes up and displays an error message on its LCD. I can turn the camera off and back on again, and then everything is okay. Why is this happening?

A: Each digital camera on the market today is essentially a little computer. Computers crash because of malfunctioning hardware or software. Your digital camera contains both hardware and software. Therefore, it's not uncommon to experience such problems.

The exact nature of the problem will very from unit to unit. Chances are good that your digital camera's manual contains a "troubleshooting" section or a section that details error codes. All error codes pertain to a particular type of malfunctioning. For example, with Canon cameras, an "err 00" message typically indicates a problem with the link between a lens and the camera body.

If you don't find an explanation for the error code in your manual, contact the manufacturer. Most digital camera makers have a technical support line staffed by real people who can answer your question. If you can live with the error by turning the camera on and off, that may be what you have to do. However, a recurring error usually indicates a problem that will require some servicing.

Before you send the camera in, however, use the camera with different batteries and with a different memory card. Many digital camera errors are a result of issues related to power or the interface between the memory card and the camera itself. Occasionally, digital cameras will have difficulties with certain types of memory cards.

Q: I get my digital pictures developed at a local store. The pictures are unsatisfactory. On my computer screen, they look great, but when I get them back as printouts, the colors are slightly off and the pictures lack contrast.

A: The source of this problem could lie on your end or it could be a problem with the place that prints your digital photographs. You need to talk to your printer about how you can calibrate your monitor so that it matches the color and contrast of the equipment that they are using. What you'll need to get from them are color profiles that they use when printing photographs.

Using color profiles can be somewhat tricky. The profiles have to be supported by the application you use to view the photographs on your monitor. For example, if you use Photoshop, the industry standard photo editing tool, you can load color profiles for viewing photographs from the View menu under Proof Setup. Other applications handle profiles differently. It's a good idea to read your image editor's manual for the proper procedure.

Once you are sure that your home computer set up roughly matches the color environment used by your printer, you can tweak your digital photographs at home, save them to a file format handled by your printer, and then be relatively certain that would you get back from the printer to match what you that seen on your computer screen.

Q: I have a problem connecting my digital camera to my computer. Before I reinstalled everything on my computer, the camera worked fine. Now it doesn't. It connects using a USB port.

A: Before you plug your camera into the computer, make sure that you have loaded any software that came with the camera. The software will likely include any communication drivers needed for your computer to recognise your camera properly.

Also, check the obvious: your camera must be turned on to be recognised by your computer.

Finally, with some computers, having multiple USB devices connected to the PC at the same time will for some reason cause one of the devices not to be recognized properly. So as a troubleshooting measure, unplug all other USB devices until you get your camera working properly with your PC.