Canon PowerShot S400 'Shooting mode dial' not working... h..

Archived from groups: rec.photo.digital (More info?)

Try holding the "menu" button down for more than 5
seconds...........................it might reset the camera to "defaults".




"PWalker" <pwalker@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:42f5c4eb@dnews.tpgi.com.au...
> Hi, I have owned my Canon PowerShot S400 camera for approximately 16
> months and had no problems with it. I havent used it much for the past
> month (always kept the barrety external to the battery while not in use).
> I however noticed that the "Shooting dial mode" does not function. It is
> always set to "AUTO". The LCD screen always shows the camera set to Auto
> mode. I dont know what is wrong with this camera. Is it damaged? Is there
> some self test i can perform to determine whether there is really
> something wrong with it? Maybe there is some setting within the camera
> that has locked it to AUTO mode.
>
> Any help most appreciated!
>
> Cheers,
> peter
>

I just fixed an S400 that had the same problem. What I had to do was take off screws holding the back plate of the camera (the plate which contains the shooting mode dial and is laid over the buttons on the back of the camera). There are two screws on the left hand side, two on the right hand side, four at the bottom, and one screw just above the switch to release the CF card. Make sure when you take the screws out that you put them back exactly in the same place because they are not all the same length.

Once you take off the back plate, you should be able to see three metal pins on the other side of the mode dial. Take a very small screwdriver and very gently lift up each of the pins so they stick up slightly more. You should be really careful with this step as I accidentally put more pressure on one of the pins than I should have, but I was able to bend it back and it seemed to be fine.

Before you put the screws back in, you can replace the plate and make sure that you can switch amongst the various shooting modes. Also, make sure that the switch that toggles between camera mode and playback mode is aligned correctly. Once you do that, you can put the screws back in.

I just bought this camera on eBay for my daughter because I had one years ago but accidentally dropped it in the water at the beach. I'm really happy to have it again because it's a really great little camera and far better than those crappy toy cameras that don't work well and take awful pictures.