Canon EX2 Hi8: Do I have to throw it away?

[CinemanUK]

I have a Canon EX2 Hi8 video camera which I bought new in 1994 or 1995.

It seems that these cameras have inside them a number of circuit boards and a number of those (if not all of them) have capacitors which are filled with a corrosive. On many of the cameras these capacitors have leaked and wrecked the circuit boards concerned. My camera is now not working, and having spoken with a number of canon service centres and Canon themselves, it appears that leaking capacitors is the cause. I was advised that this is a well known problem and whilst if caught early it was possible to replace a leaking capacitor before the host board concerned was ruined, the probability is that once one capacitor has started to leak it is probable that others will follow. In any event there are neither boards nor individual capacitors now held by Canon, and all service centres and Canon themselves advised me that I might just as well throw the camera away. It would appear that Canon have known of this problem for some time, and yet I have never come across any information which suggests that they undertook a recall in relation to the problem and they are not prepared to accept any responsibility now. Contrasting this with a sensor problem I had on a Nikon digital camera recently (out of warranty, I might add by a number of years), Nikon immediately accepted responsibility and replaced the failed sensor free of charge.

This seems to say a great deal about the acceptance of responsibility for what was a weakness in a manufacturer's product, and whilst 15 years could be said to be a long time, this failure of my Canon EX2 Hi8 is not the result of abuse by an owner. It comes as a bit of a shock therefore that I should be advised to just throw away what was an expensive camera (about £2800 as I recollect it) which has had light use and has been well looked after.

However, before I do what I have been advised to do, I am wondering if anybody has any information or advice which might just lead to the camera being saved?

[tom hardwick]

Even if the camera is 'saved' by a highly experienced, cheap and fast repair man, what have you got?

To put it bluntly, you've got a camcorder that weighs a lot and looks the biz but which gives blurry, smudgy, analogue pictures. It will be beaten by anything digital costing more than £150. It's just one of those things. A bit like my Canon 1014E. Seemed to me to be top dog, but was soon overtaken.

tom.

[CinemanUK]

I guess you are saying what I didn't want to think, but of course you are correct. They do say that technology is out of date the moment one walks out of the shop!

[Dave Watterson]

If it is of any comfort ... any time you buy a new car, the moment you drive it out of the showroom its value drops by the amount of a couple of good video cameras!

Researching new kitchen appliances last year I found a company making high quality goods that were designed to last 15 to 20 years, but they cost several times the cost of normal white goods. Maybe the same is true of cameras - if they were built to last a lifetime they would cost even more. Besides - as Tom points out the underlying technology moves on so rapidly that state-of-the-art soon becomes historic-technology.

I fondly recall (or probably misremember) a comment of Tom's to the effect that once you reconcile yourself to the fact that you will need a new camcorder every few years, you no longer worry so much about wearing out the heads, using it for rewind and so on. There are some plusses to take into account.

Dave (sympathetic) W

[CinemanUK]

Ordinarily I would readily accept that eventually things wear out and need to be replaced. What we have here, however, is not the result of fair wear and tear, but rather devices (capacitors in this case) which the manufacturer chose and fitted and which have failed with the result that the whole camera is a write off. I approached one repair centre who candidly said they could do nothing, and that they had had to say the same thing to many owners. This suggests failure on a more general scale, rather than on an individual scale. This is not at all the same as a clutch on a car wearing out after some years, for example, but rather the clutch being wholly inappropriate in the first place. Similarly it is not a case of depreciation.

Nevertheless, I appreciate that it was perhaps something of a forlorn hope and I guess I should just accept that the camera now represents "old technology" and should be retired. An interesting question is whether I should trust this particular manufacturer again. That needs thinking about!

[tom hardwick]

That's a good point about giving a wide berth to a manufacturer who has taken your money yet not delivered goods that were fit for purpose. I won't give Alfa Romeo any more of my money either - not after they sold me an Alfasud in 1975.

[CinemanUK]

Ah, but Tom, things do move on. I bought a Canon 450D digital camera before the problem earlier referred to became known, and that is a most satisfying piece of equipment. So I guess one has to be careful not to chew on these things too long. I suppose that if it was new technology at the time of manufacture it is a case of the possibility of failure not being foreseeable, and the whole thing has to be put down as unfortunate. By the way, you might find that Alfas are now pretty good cars!!

[tom hardwick]

Yes, I might find that Alfas are now pretty good cars but they won't be making them with my money. There's lots of other good cars out there - as there are camera manufacturers.

[Dave Watterson]

We may be drifting slightly in his topic but ...

Many famous-name car companies are now producing most of their models in the same production line system as "ordinary" cars - not the hand crafted way we used to imagine. So you might buy a famous-name but the product is not noticeably better or more reliable than a much cheaper model.

The same seems to apply to many "big name" fashion items too.

I wonder if that is a problem for the camera companies too. They need to compete so that may mean compromising standards. Perhaps that helps explain the price difference for "broadcast quality" gear.

Having had that moan ... mass-produced goods do seem more reliable and satisfactory than they used to be. The relative prices do not seem to have gone up and in most cases have dropped significantly. Good kit still costs a lot, but is a smaller percentage of our annual income.

Dave