Looks like I got too happy too soon. I've been back and forth with this camera. It's been going strong for many years, but has recently had a
few problems. After thinking it was faulty beyond economical repair, I changed the the SD card and it started working perfectly again. But now, it has become faulty again. And that's with the new
2GB (Class 2) SD Card. The problem has changed though. Last time it developed a fuzzy screen a few seconds after being powered on. This time problem is different.
The camera powers up fine, but when I take a picture the screen freezes on the image that has been taken and just locks up. Either that or it goes through the motions of taking a picture (flash, capture noise, etc) but doesn't actually capture the image. Just a frozen black screen. Very weird. In both cases the battery has to be taken out and put back in to get it to respond. This to me looks like another memory card issue, but I have tried to take pictures with no card inserted, so just using the cameras internal memory, and still I get the same error symptoms.
It looks like my U-CA5 camera has well and truly had it's day in the sun. Ten years of days in the sun to be exact, so no complaints at all. Well, except the posts I've made complaining / explaining about it! Overall, it's a brilliant camera. But, I'm glad I bought the
WB500 when I did. I've been using it more and more lately and I'm getting the hang of using it. The more I use it the more it has grown on me. Film mode is good considering how old the camera is. I've been experimenting, using it as a car dash-cam at the highest possible quality of 1280HD @30FPS. It's been really good.
Specially when considering that this camera can be bought for £25 - £30 on eBay.
*Update: I'm never writing about the UCA-5 again! After everything that has happened with this camera, broke, fixed itself, broke again etc etc, it has now miraculously fixed itself yet again! Now working great again. It's like the Terminator, it just won't die. Happy days!
