The Canon PowerShot A70

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The Canon PowerShot A70

Yes, it may be hard to believe for users of the Canon A620 or SD700 IS, but Canon made a really bad camera. The Canon A70 had a very auspicious start, garnering 4 and 5 star reviews from eminent professionals like CNET and Imaging Resource. At the end of an exhaustive and comprehensive technical review, Steve's Digicams called it "a great camera for the point-and-shoot crowd." On the strength of these early reports, and the general strength of Canon cameras in general, consumers flocked to buy the A70, and it became a very successful and widely-used model.

What nobody knew at the time was that there was a little gremlin lurking deep within the A70 that would result in one of the biggest digital camera disasters we've ever seen. Like clockwork, after about a year of picture perfect operation, users began experiencing problems with their cameras. Strange purple lines began appearing across the LCD screen, obscuring the display. Photos became fuzzy and blurred, and often distorted with unusual colors. Then the dreaded "E18 error" made itself known, causing the camera's lens to become stuck while extending. User A. Meza gives a good timeline in their review, saying "This camera was great for about 1 year. For the 2nd year it had the purple lines across the screen which were recorded with each picture rendering it useless. It stopped working altogether with the e18 error after a year and a half."

Eventually, the noise being made by angry users grew so loud, that Canon was forced to do the right thing, and offered a free repair for the A70. Note however, that their service notice seems to only address the malfunctioning CCD sensor, and not the E18 error. The number of reviews we have received regarding this camera and its problems is tremendous, and the volume is so great that we've had to choose only a select few to display so as not to clog up the page. Much of what isn't visible, however, can be easily summed up by user Lionel, who said, "You can bet that I will never purchase another Canon product."