Thursday, June 04, 2009

Error Message

Yep. It's finally happened. It came on quite suddenly. One minute the digital camera was working just fine, and the next ... well, this is what happened.

On the LCD screen - E 91:01, flashing away. Tried to do the reset with a pencil tip in the little hole. Went through the whole initialization process, date and time, personal preferences, language, exposure, backlight, zebra pattern, the works. Got all that done. But the flashing didn't go away.

Browsed the internet to see if other people had run into this problem, and, would you believe it, there were literally hundreds of owners of cameras, as well as of many other electronic gadgets, all clamoring for help with the E 91:01 message. And most of the responses were for the owners to send the damn thing to the manufacturer for repair. In my case, with it being a Sony, we're talking a basic charge of a couple hundred bucks, and that does not even include the cost of any parts the repair might need.


So what to do? It's a big heavy camera, not a pocket point-and-shoot. Everything else is working fine. Takes excellent photos. Great lens. But I can't flog it on eBay unless the problem is fixed. I decided to keep it with the flashing E 91:01, and use an external flash when needed. Tested that, works fine. Not the best solution, seeing as there's going to be added weight with the flash. But then I use it mostly outdoors, without the flash. Besides, I can rationalize that the on-camera pop-up flash is practically useless anyhow in most situations except for flash fill.

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