New P880 user has problem

[stanIam]

Hi,

Just purchased a P880 and am learning the ropes. Have been taking pictures since I bought my first SLR (Exacta) many moons ago and I am enjoying getting back into creative photography in the digital realm.

A couple for questions for the group:

1. Anyone else have the problem of the camera refusing to focus for a time? I ran into this on vacation and thought the camera was hosed. Symptoms:
Pressing shutter halfway produced a blurry mess with AF warning light on.

Tried to take a couple of pictures in this mode, but camera refused. Finally took a single picture that was completely white when viewed in review mode.
Tried to get out of this mode by:

• turning camera off
• removing battery
• using menu "reset' command

...but no luck.

Turned camera off for a while and later it "healed itself' and has now worked fine for several days.

Emailed Kodak and got the helpful reply:

"try moving your feet wider apart before taking picture. Try using self-timer" etc.

Have since realized that I may have accidentally put camera in Macro mode. This is reset only when going to Auto mode. However, this does not account for white picture.

2. Have now tried to contact Kodak via email and phone for several questions (the manual is not that good). With all due respect, the responses I have gotten have fallen into two categories:

A) Hello consumer- we have analyzed your message using a computer to pick out keywords. Here is the canned response that we are told to supply when these keywords are found...

B) Dear consumer - your question is very important to us, please wait while I try to find it on my computer screen....

Anyone know of a way to get intelligent responses from real people? I really like my P880 and will eventually figure out how to get the most from it by trial and error. Just rankles me a bit that Kodak does not seem to want to help. They seem to be giving "point and shoot" support for a very advanced camera.

Thanks,

Stan

 

[ajay147]

Stan,

I have upgraded the firmware on my p880 to version 1.02 (which you can download from Kodak's website).

It improves general the general speed of the camera (lag, shot to shot time etc), and also solves soms focusinf issues.

I dont have vast experience with the camera as I have only had it a few days - but most people will agree that the new firmware transforms the camera in many aspects.

Hope this helps

AJ

 

[mike051051]

Stan,

First I want to apologize for your not receiving proper support for your questions up to now. That's not something I like to hear and we do work to constantly improve our support centers.

Now to your difficulties, the white image could have been caused by a number of different things, but your description of the failure to take the picture leads me to believe that the camera was hung up by some type of electronic glitch. Our cameras are designed to always take the picture unless the processing buffer is full, so refusal to do that typically means a camera hang. You did the exact right thing by removing and reinserting the battery to recover from the hang.

AJ's advice to update the firmware is quite right. The new firmware has key improvements to auto focus speed and function and really increases the enjoyment of using the P880. You can download the new firmware from the Kodak website at:

http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/downloads/dln_ekn030484.jhtml?operatingSystem=windows_xp&downloadLanguage=en

Just select your computer's operating system from the drop down and click on the select button to download the firmware. Just follow the instructions shown on the download page to update the camera.

--
Mike O'Brien
Eastman Kodak Company

 

[stanIam]

Hello Mike,

Well how nice to get a real reply from Kodak! I assure you I am not exaggerating about the replies from Kodak support. I would be happy to forward the threads to anyone at Kodak who cares to see them.

I bascially came to the same conclusion you did regarding the focusing problem I had - but note that removing the battery did not fix the problem. Thanks for letting me know this is a viable thing to do in the future though. I have read that various digital cameras do occasionally hang so knowing how to reset is useful. I am not sure what I did to get it back to normal, but after leaving it off for several minutes, tried to use it again and this time it worked and has worked fine since. I think I may have spun the mode dial trying to 'shock' it back to normal. In doing so, I may have taken it out of program mode (which holds the macro setting after power down) to full auto (which does not hold the macro setting).

Finally, thanks for the tip (and to Ajay) to upgrade firmware, but I had already done so before this happened.

Overall, I like the camera very much. I think Kodak did a great job of packing a large set of useful features into the camera, but the manual and support are not at the same level.

Regards,

Stan

 

[Kenneth Margulies]

one great thing about this forum is that mike from kodak is usually here to help out. he does an excellent job.
look forward to your posting future shots.
the P880 is a great camera--have fun with it.