@yourepicfailure said:
Uh no, that's not how it works. You haven't seen what I've seen happen mechanically to cameras. But I'll tell you, tapping or bopping almost never works to fix mechanical faults.
Oh, I'm sorry. My bad.
Yeah, especially with all the plasticy junk in consumer cameras, you'll wind up doing more harm than good.
I remember a Pentax SF10 that came my way. The shutter had failed miserably, and I had to use my fingers to carefully push & pull the shutter blades back into place.
And considering I only got these fricking rechargables for almost a week now, what am I gonna do with them if the goddamn thing I bought them for dies on me?
Expecting for it to be black screen tomorrow unless by sheer luck camera fixes itself.
Huh. I guess this is the end of the post. The fucking camera just destroyed itself on me. And I was getting to the fun stuff... like tampering with the camera settings (btw which has nothing to do with the black screen.), taking pictures and zooming in all the way....
See if you can find a firmware update and reset the camera to factory settings before (and if that doesn't clear it) update the firmware. Maybe try a factory reset after the update as well.
The problem is, the "firmware update" for THIS camera is really fucking hard to find. I don't even think that this camera even had a firmware update to begin with.
No webpages on how to reset it to factory settings, although found some reviews for this back in 2004.
Monday, November 29, 2004
320x240 for video? Thats worse than a creative 1mp camera that i picked up over 2 years ago, that did 352x288 back then. Why are the manufacturers not moving on with movie clip mode like they have done with the photo eye?
If the eye in a similar priced cam is now 4-6 Mp for stills, why is movie mode not at least 640x480? Sure its a chunk more memory, so just buy a bigger card or switch the mode down to what they have now??
I guess theres something im missing here, I just dont understand it.
Monday, November 29, 2004
It is nice to see a review be a little more negative, however this comment near the end really left a bad taste in my mouth:
"there is a bright side. Firstly, the Photosmart M307 is priced very reasonably at >~$165."
No its not! For $165 its total junk. It is like right at the end of the article they just had to throw somethign in to make people think that all camera for less than $200 are junk :(
Sunday, November 28, 2004
What I dislike most about digital cameras is the laggy shutter delay. Prefocus sometimes doesn't work if you move around a bit or the subject of you picture is.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
I had the displeasure of working with a 2 year old HP 2 MP, no zoom 315 model and it's preety horrible even for a 2 year old camera. I had hoped they had changed, but I guess they haven't. Too bad.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
I have never been impressed with HP digicams. We are forced to use them at work, at least until I made an executive decision and bought a Canon A75 (which the last time I checked was about $199). I hope people do their research when looking for a good camera and avoid HP.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
September 23, 2005. Goddamn this is so old and rare. Where did you dig this out from? Also what firmware version is this? My old firmware version was "v1.00_N v3.7".
I actually tried to update the firmware a while ago and it didn't do shit. So the firmware is ruled out. And reinserting the batteries (the method I tried like 20 times) didn't work either.
So yeah, this is going to be the end of the post.
The camera toasted itself for good. It wasn't a good camera anyway. Reading those reviews I saw how people were talking about how shit and garbage this camera was. But I liked this camera only because it was rare, old and... a hardware. Not software, video or VHS tapes, but a digital camera that you taked pictures and recorded video on. This camera was special. It didn't record on Mini-DV or DVDs like those cameras did in 2004/2006. It stored media on SD Cards. Something that you can get now easily and cheaply. Probably there were other cameras back in 2004 that stored media on a SD card because well... SD cards existed far back as 2000 (I believe). So unfortunately and sadly this camera now has to go. They won't always last forever especially if their hardware can pull some shit on them. Software and video can be found and easily brought back. But hardware don't. If hardware goes to shit then you can't do anything to it like it's a bunch of 1s and 0s. (Unless you know how to reverse the shit). This was used for 8 years... (starting from August 2004) Abandoned for 6 years (in 2012) and... used for one last time for 4 months... (in March 2019) by me. I started this post for one goal. To restore this camera. But something in the very beginning was blocking my way in doing this. The battery terminals. Since the crap inside one of the terminals was stuck on it, that wouldn't let me turn on this camera. And I was gonna end the post right there. But then... I figured something out. If I scrape it off then it can reveal the terminal and allow the batteries to turn on the camera! So I sat down, turned on the flash since the battery compartment down there was pretty dark and tried hard to scrape them off. And goddamn it was a victory. I posted in excitement saying that by doing this process I allowed the camera to turn on. And much more was to come along the way. Now I could access the camera and show it's capabilities! So I posted pictures of what it took. Also along the way there was something frustrating me along the way. Alkaline batteries. They were a pain. An agony. But I dealt with it. Until this month. When I fucked them off and finally... got me rechargables. What this camera needed. There were tons of replies, people all over the 'net jumping on this bandwagon of adventures of how this camera works. The time that this camera gets finally noticed. The journey continued. And this is my post with the most replies so far. It happily turned on, connected to my computer, and... did what it was intended to do. Taking pictures... recording videos... just like what any other camera was meant to do. But it is now saying goodbye. Served it's purpose and now... gone for good. Rest In Peace, hardware. Lived for almost 15 years. (August 2004 - July 2019)
If anyone wants to share their experiences with this camera (which I assume is very few) and the people that were on this post trying to help me along the journey, feel free to share your experience down below what it was like. To bring this camera into the public very recently until this day. I bet barely few of the people here know this camera apart from I guess the magazines in 2004 or the webpages from 2004 that reviewed cameras that they looked at.
Yep. It now doesn't work. Tried recharging batteries and even charging them to full. Nothing. It is now dead... Atleast it got used for one last time after it has been neglected.
Give yourself credit, you got it working. Albeit briefly, but working. Hopefully you gain some lifelong experience that may help you in the future when troubleshooting other related things.
Be glad your camera didn't need extensive modification to work. In this camera, theNiCad batterie leaked inside the casing. I couldn't identify the cells, so I kept the label and constructed a makeshift 9.6v battery to power the camera. Or at least the digital portion. It would not output enough juice to drive the hulking f90x base camera, so I had to install the f90x 4 battery holder to power it separately. So in essence, the f90x camera is powered one way and the digital portion (the giant thing underneath that says Kodak) is powered another way.
This looked like a bomb to some folks and a lot were eyeing on me as I was walking around taking test shots. It's just a bunch of AA batteries!
Here's a sample shot. It's the alleyway of my new house. Didn't do much, just fired the shutter and hoped it came out (these's no image review screen!) but it kills me how crooked it is.
For some reason I managed to get Photoshop CS6 to read the non-standard raw image. For you non photo folks, this means the camera dumps the information it captures into a special file with no post-processing. However, the data format is non-standard proprietary format developed by Kodak. And we all know what happens to proprietary formats years and years later when the hardware or software is unsupported. @Windows99SE
Even being exactly a decade older that your m307 and half the resolution, it is superior in terms of color accuracy and sensitivity.
It is still no match for my D2x, or any newer digital camera. Or even film.
@yourepicfailure said:
Give yourself credit, you got it working. Albeit briefly, but working. Hopefully you gain some lifelong experience that may help you in the future when troubleshooting other related things.
Yeah, I should feel good that I got this thing working for a brief amount of time. It is no suprise that the camera would die after 15 years. But I still got it working. The only problem was the battery terminals, that was all. I got to scrape it away and that allowed for the batteries to work. For a camera that has no in-depth information and about 400,000 results on google, this is great job for me. Briefly before it pulled the plug. Also the fact that this camera now sells upwards of a grand on the internet.
Alright well now the camera is now going back to the closet of where it was from. Back to being abondoned.
Actually I just realized some of the critics in 2004 were right. This camera has alot of flaws which might explain its rarity and failure at success. First off, with SD cards back then holding 2GB, which was quite alot back then, you would expect this to have 6MP pictures right? Well in this camera, this camera can go up to only 3.2MP. That's pretty disappointing. Also the movie (or video recording) is an upscaled 240p video. Which is pretty bad quality to hold especially if you have a 2GB memory SD card inside of it. You would expect this would be atleast 640x480 right? Also the fact that it has limited accessibility (USB and SD card), no wireless connection and also only one type of batteries (rechargables, never alkaline), the costs start to add up. Standard 1gb SD cards I assume back then were 19.99$. Also batteries were an additional 49.99$. So the camera is more costlier than it is. It is now no longer 200$, it is now close to $300. Not accurate, an assumption. This is Awful. Now that I think of it. This is one shit camera. No wonder it got abandoned.
Hmmm... I will still try to make it work. I tried scraping the battery terminals again but nothing happened so the problem are the batteries. I will charge the batteries and try to turn on the camera with it for a week or so. I still have hope in it... I don't want it to die so abruptly especially when I got through the trouble of it's damn alkalines. C'mon camera, work!!!
HOLY SHIT, THE CAMERA STARTED WORKING AGAIN!!!!!!!
However, the fucking camera doesn't work when I put rechargables in, so I have to put alkalines (ironically...) but the camera turns on and turns off again. I need to figure out a way to make it work again...
GODDAMNIT! THE BLACK SCREEN THING IS STILL THERE!!!! >:(
I am guessing the rechargables have to be charged fully so... charging they go!
I think now is the time to update that firmware if I follow the instructions it came with... that is... if I get through when the camera makes a indication noise that it is working. Because when that happens it turns off. Something is going on...
Nope. Hopeless. The camera turns on then turns off. It never turns on when I put rechargables in. Only alkalines. And the black screen thing is still there. Atleast I tried... Rest in peace.
I also tried 2 more rechargable batteries. That's right. I bought another pair of rechargables. On accident by the way. While I was in a store I saw some AAA batteries that were supposedly "rechargable". I asked the cashier if they had bigger ones. And suprise suprise, there was! It said 3000 mAh on the batteries and it was off-brand which I was suspicious of. I was expecting the batteries to explode when charged. But fortunately they didn't. Sometimes getting rechargables can be easy as fuck. But unfortunately they didn't work on the camera so I will full charge them to see if it does anything.
@yourepicfailure said:
Something got corroded, most definitively a solder joint.
Do you mean one of the battery terminals? Well I tried fixing them and it still didn't work. If you mean internal, then it is over. This discussion ends here. As I can not do anything in my power to fix it... Unfortunately.
Oh and that doesn't explain why the camera doesn't work now because it worked before... I can't think of any reason why that would happen. Maybe when I abondoned the camera when it got the black screen thing it corroded? I don't know.
@yourepicfailure said:
Something internal explains it.
Components can come loose and make connections some times and sometimes not.
Likely, placing it back into use put a bit of physical strain and over time was just enough to make it loose enough.
Well whatever. I cannot fix it. Fuck this camera and it giving me a pain in my ass. I put it out of it's misery and I don't wanna use the piece of shit anymore. Was a great ride tho taking all the pictures..
If it is that much trouble, then by all means, it is time to move on to something else. If you really want a working camera of this model, another one will probably turn up on eBay for a few bucks eventually. It's not worth the frustration, unless the technical challenge is what you got it for.
Comments
Yeah, especially with all the plasticy junk in consumer cameras, you'll wind up doing more harm than good.
I remember a Pentax SF10 that came my way. The shutter had failed miserably, and I had to use my fingers to carefully push & pull the shutter blades back into place.
And considering I only got these fricking rechargables for almost a week now, what am I gonna do with them if the goddamn thing I bought them for dies on me?
Expecting for it to be black screen tomorrow unless by sheer luck camera fixes itself.
So I charged the rechargables to max, inserted the batteries in and what was the result?
Unfortunately, still black screen. Anyone has other tips? Or is this the end of the post...
Huh. I guess this is the end of the post. The fucking camera just destroyed itself on me. And I was getting to the fun stuff... like tampering with the camera settings (btw which has nothing to do with the black screen.), taking pictures and zooming in all the way....
See if you can find a firmware update and reset the camera to factory settings before (and if that doesn't clear it) update the firmware. Maybe try a factory reset after the update as well.
The problem is, the "firmware update" for THIS camera is really fucking hard to find. I don't even think that this camera even had a firmware update to begin with.
I guess I have no choice. If this is the only option, so be it. Goodbye camera data...
I need to figure out how to hell to factory reset the camera first. Maybe the manual can help.
Nope, not even one mention on how to hell you factory reset this camera.
No webpages on how to reset it to factory settings, although found some reviews for this back in 2004.
Firmware:
https://mega.nz/#!aHwkRSBL!uUku1o2BbqDjc3nph6nkKV8s5KMVhqtB4stVqtmndRk
It appears removing and reinserting baterries is the method of resetting the camera.
Just image the drive first. Dump the entire device with something like Linux "dd" (I don't keep up with all the tools on Windows that come and go).
Anyway, it sounds to me like the camera is toast. That does suck, but that happens.
Also, just a reminder that you can edit your posts for a couple of hours after making them rather than adding new posts.
September 23, 2005. Goddamn this is so old and rare. Where did you dig this out from? Also what firmware version is this? My old firmware version was "v1.00_N v3.7".
I actually tried to update the firmware a while ago and it didn't do shit. So the firmware is ruled out. And reinserting the batteries (the method I tried like 20 times) didn't work either.
So yeah, this is going to be the end of the post.
The camera toasted itself for good. It wasn't a good camera anyway. Reading those reviews I saw how people were talking about how shit and garbage this camera was. But I liked this camera only because it was rare, old and... a hardware. Not software, video or VHS tapes, but a digital camera that you taked pictures and recorded video on. This camera was special. It didn't record on Mini-DV or DVDs like those cameras did in 2004/2006. It stored media on SD Cards. Something that you can get now easily and cheaply. Probably there were other cameras back in 2004 that stored media on a SD card because well... SD cards existed far back as 2000 (I believe). So unfortunately and sadly this camera now has to go. They won't always last forever especially if their hardware can pull some shit on them. Software and video can be found and easily brought back. But hardware don't. If hardware goes to shit then you can't do anything to it like it's a bunch of 1s and 0s. (Unless you know how to reverse the shit). This was used for 8 years... (starting from August 2004) Abandoned for 6 years (in 2012) and... used for one last time for 4 months... (in March 2019) by me. I started this post for one goal. To restore this camera. But something in the very beginning was blocking my way in doing this. The battery terminals. Since the crap inside one of the terminals was stuck on it, that wouldn't let me turn on this camera. And I was gonna end the post right there. But then... I figured something out. If I scrape it off then it can reveal the terminal and allow the batteries to turn on the camera! So I sat down, turned on the flash since the battery compartment down there was pretty dark and tried hard to scrape them off. And goddamn it was a victory. I posted in excitement saying that by doing this process I allowed the camera to turn on. And much more was to come along the way. Now I could access the camera and show it's capabilities! So I posted pictures of what it took. Also along the way there was something frustrating me along the way. Alkaline batteries. They were a pain. An agony. But I dealt with it. Until this month. When I fucked them off and finally... got me rechargables. What this camera needed. There were tons of replies, people all over the 'net jumping on this bandwagon of adventures of how this camera works. The time that this camera gets finally noticed. The journey continued. And this is my post with the most replies so far. It happily turned on, connected to my computer, and... did what it was intended to do. Taking pictures... recording videos... just like what any other camera was meant to do. But it is now saying goodbye. Served it's purpose and now... gone for good. Rest In Peace, hardware. Lived for almost 15 years. (August 2004 - July 2019)
If anyone wants to share their experiences with this camera (which I assume is very few) and the people that were on this post trying to help me along the journey, feel free to share your experience down below what it was like. To bring this camera into the public very recently until this day. I bet barely few of the people here know this camera apart from I guess the magazines in 2004 or the webpages from 2004 that reviewed cameras that they looked at.
Yep. It now doesn't work. Tried recharging batteries and even charging them to full. Nothing. It is now dead... Atleast it got used for one last time after it has been neglected.
Give yourself credit, you got it working. Albeit briefly, but working. Hopefully you gain some lifelong experience that may help you in the future when troubleshooting other related things.
Be glad your camera didn't need extensive modification to work. In this camera, theNiCad batterie leaked inside the casing. I couldn't identify the cells, so I kept the label and constructed a makeshift 9.6v battery to power the camera. Or at least the digital portion. It would not output enough juice to drive the hulking f90x base camera, so I had to install the f90x 4 battery holder to power it separately. So in essence, the f90x camera is powered one way and the digital portion (the giant thing underneath that says Kodak) is powered another way.
This looked like a bomb to some folks and a lot were eyeing on me as I was walking around taking test shots. It's just a bunch of AA batteries!
Here's a sample shot. It's the alleyway of my new house. Didn't do much, just fired the shutter and hoped it came out (these's no image review screen!) but it kills me how crooked it is.
For some reason I managed to get Photoshop CS6 to read the non-standard raw image. For you non photo folks, this means the camera dumps the information it captures into a special file with no post-processing. However, the data format is non-standard proprietary format developed by Kodak. And we all know what happens to proprietary formats years and years later when the hardware or software is unsupported.
@Windows99SE
Even being exactly a decade older that your m307 and half the resolution, it is superior in terms of color accuracy and sensitivity.
It is still no match for my D2x, or any newer digital camera. Or even film.
Yeah, I should feel good that I got this thing working for a brief amount of time. It is no suprise that the camera would die after 15 years. But I still got it working. The only problem was the battery terminals, that was all. I got to scrape it away and that allowed for the batteries to work. For a camera that has no in-depth information and about 400,000 results on google, this is great job for me. Briefly before it pulled the plug. Also the fact that this camera now sells upwards of a grand on the internet.
Alright well now the camera is now going back to the closet of where it was from. Back to being abondoned.
Actually I just realized some of the critics in 2004 were right. This camera has alot of flaws which might explain its rarity and failure at success. First off, with SD cards back then holding 2GB, which was quite alot back then, you would expect this to have 6MP pictures right? Well in this camera, this camera can go up to only 3.2MP. That's pretty disappointing. Also the movie (or video recording) is an upscaled 240p video. Which is pretty bad quality to hold especially if you have a 2GB memory SD card inside of it. You would expect this would be atleast 640x480 right? Also the fact that it has limited accessibility (USB and SD card), no wireless connection and also only one type of batteries (rechargables, never alkaline), the costs start to add up. Standard 1gb SD cards I assume back then were 19.99$. Also batteries were an additional 49.99$. So the camera is more costlier than it is. It is now no longer 200$, it is now close to $300. Not accurate, an assumption. This is Awful. Now that I think of it. This is one shit camera. No wonder it got abandoned.
Hmmm... I will still try to make it work. I tried scraping the battery terminals again but nothing happened so the problem are the batteries. I will charge the batteries and try to turn on the camera with it for a week or so. I still have hope in it... I don't want it to die so abruptly especially when I got through the trouble of it's damn alkalines. C'mon camera, work!!!
Nope. The camera is with confirmation officially dead. It cannot be reserved back into original state... Damn. And I got the rechargables for it... :(
Rest in peace. Atleast it got to see it's 15th birthday before dying.
HOLY SHIT, THE CAMERA STARTED WORKING AGAIN!!!!!!!
However, the fucking camera doesn't work when I put rechargables in, so I have to put alkalines (ironically...) but the camera turns on and turns off again. I need to figure out a way to make it work again...
It connected to the computer!! Unfortunately all data was wiped...
GODDAMNIT! THE BLACK SCREEN THING IS STILL THERE!!!! >:(
I am guessing the rechargables have to be charged fully so... charging they go!
I think now is the time to update that firmware if I follow the instructions it came with... that is... if I get through when the camera makes a indication noise that it is working. Because when that happens it turns off. Something is going on...
Nope. Hopeless. The camera turns on then turns off. It never turns on when I put rechargables in. Only alkalines. And the black screen thing is still there. Atleast I tried... Rest in peace.
I also tried 2 more rechargable batteries. That's right. I bought another pair of rechargables. On accident by the way. While I was in a store I saw some AAA batteries that were supposedly "rechargable". I asked the cashier if they had bigger ones. And suprise suprise, there was! It said 3000 mAh on the batteries and it was off-brand which I was suspicious of. I was expecting the batteries to explode when charged. But fortunately they didn't. Sometimes getting rechargables can be easy as fuck. But unfortunately they didn't work on the camera so I will full charge them to see if it does anything.
Nope. Doesn't work. Goodbye camera..
Something got corroded, most definitively a solder joint.
Do you mean one of the battery terminals? Well I tried fixing them and it still didn't work. If you mean internal, then it is over. This discussion ends here. As I can not do anything in my power to fix it... Unfortunately.
Oh and that doesn't explain why the camera doesn't work now because it worked before... I can't think of any reason why that would happen. Maybe when I abondoned the camera when it got the black screen thing it corroded? I don't know.
Something internal explains it.
Components can come loose and make connections some times and sometimes not.
Likely, placing it back into use put a bit of physical strain and over time was just enough to make it loose enough.
Well whatever. I cannot fix it. Fuck this camera and it giving me a pain in my ass. I put it out of it's misery and I don't wanna use the piece of shit anymore. Was a great ride tho taking all the pictures..
If it is that much trouble, then by all means, it is time to move on to something else. If you really want a working camera of this model, another one will probably turn up on eBay for a few bucks eventually. It's not worth the frustration, unless the technical challenge is what you got it for.