Julie Barrett is a freelance writer and photographer based in Plano, TX.

This line sounds so wrong out of context...

Fresh when it gets here from Julie Barrett
Tuesday, January 29, 2008


Fry's sells bodies.

Camera bodies, that is.

This afternoon I stepped outdoors to shoot some weather pictures. The wind storm had peaked, but I slapped an ND filter on the camera and shot what I thought some very cool pictures of chinaberries moving in the breeze. I brought the camera indoors, sat down at the computer (while still holding the camera in my hand), looked at the pictures, deleted a couple of obviously bad ones, turned off the camera, then removed the CF card. I placed the card in my computer, which immediately went bonkers trying to recognize the card.

I decided to reboot as I'd also had a USB floppy drive plugged in. Perhaps that was causing trouble. It shouldn't, but I've seen the USB ports go crazy over less. Rebooted. Same thing.

So I put the card back in the camera and the camera wouldn't power up. If I pulled the card, the camera would work fine, other than complaining about the lack of a CF card. O-kay. I tried another card. Same thing. I took the camera to the work bench and looked inside the slot under the magnifying lamp. The pins were fine. I've tried everything I could think of. I even plugged the camera to the notebook computer via the USB cable (that's where the software suite resides). The camera noticed that it was plugged into the computer, but the software wouldn't detect the camera.

Ouch.

I'm going to leave the battery out overnight and see if that will make a difference. I suspect not. After some time searching the web I found a couple of E-300 owners with the same problem. One had a bent pin, the ohter had a broken camera. I don't have a bent pin.

I sent an e-mail to Olympus asking for an estimate. I suspect the answer will send a shudder through my credit card balance. If the estimate is what I suspect, I'll probably give up on the camera and get an E-410 body through Fry's.

Yes, Fry's sells bodies.

Camera bodies, that is.

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Filed under: Photography            

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Raoul said:
Sorry to hear about that, Julie. Are you sure it's not the CF card itself? Did you try other CF cards? The E-330 is a fine camera and it'd be a shame if it stopped working.
Date: 1/29/2008 10:00:11 PM Date: 1/29/2008 10:00:11 PM

Gravatar
julie said:
It's not the card. I've tried multiple cards. My last trick was to insert a freshly-charged battery and a just-formatted CF card to see if that made a difference. Of course not.

I do like my Oly. This was also the first time I'd tried this new ND filter and I liked what I saw in the viewfinder. It's all trash, now. I'd not mind the trashed files as much if the camera hadn't died.
Date: 1/29/2008 10:10:58 PM Date: 1/29/2008 10:10:58 PM

Gravatar
Raoul said:
Sorry to hear about that, Julie. Are you sure it's not the CF card itself? Did you try other CF cards? The E-330 is a fine camera and it'd be a shame if it stopped working.
Date: 1/29/2008 10:00:11 PM Date: 1/29/2008 10:00:11 PM

Gravatar
julie said:
It's not the card. I've tried multiple cards. My last trick was to insert a freshly-charged battery and a just-formatted CF card to see if that made a difference. Of course not.

I do like my Oly. This was also the first time I'd tried this new ND filter and I liked what I saw in the viewfinder. It's all trash, now. I'd not mind the trashed files as much if the camera hadn't died.
Date: 1/29/2008 10:10:58 PM Date: 1/29/2008 10:10:58 PM





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