Konica KD-500Z The lens is jammed open & i keep getting system error SOO4E/SOO41. Can anyone help please ? Ta

Question

Konica KD-500Z The lens is jammed open & i keep getting system error SOO4E/SOO41. Can anyone help please ? Ta

Answer 1

As it's Konica Minolta I'm guessing it's really old and I bet you paid £250+ for it???

My advice would be to chuck it out and get a new camera becuase someimtes if you take it to repair shops (Jessops in particular) they will charge you more money to get an old (and lets face it crappy) camera fixed than if you were to just buy yourself a brand new shiney camera.

You can get really good compact cameras now for £100 that will be perfect for holidays and parties etc. If you are going to get a new camera my advice would be to not spend more than £150 unless you really do want a top of the range SLR simply because as soon as you buy it it will go out of trend and the big names will have bought a new model out thats better than the one you bought for pretty much the same money or less!!!

£100 is more than enough for a decent compact camera. A lot of people will reel you in with a selling pitch that consists of face recognition, anti shake, lots of MP's and all ther rest of it but at the end of the day if you dont understand how any of that works your not going to use it that often so whats the point in spending the extra money for something your not going to use anyway? I personally like Pentax for compact cameras although it must be said that to hear people complaining about battery life (especially cameras that take normal AA batteries) is pretty poor. If you get a camera with a lithium rechargable battery you should be fine for a days worth of power just remember that if you leave your camera on charge all the time when it is switched off then over time you will wreck the battery  thus making it run out of power quicker - only charge it up when you need to! Another model I like in the Nikon L12. that has got really simple menus and everything is nice and clear thus avoiding confusion etc etc

Of course I could be completely wrong about the price to repair your existing camera so your best bet is to shop around. Go to some of your highstreet camera shops and see how much they will quote you to repair it then once you have that information then ask yourself is it worth payig the money to get this one repiared or shall i just go and buy a new one?

Final bit of advice if you are going to buy yourself a new camera. Dont go on what the online specification says. Go into the shop and ask someone to get a camera out of the glass cabinet so that you can turn it on, take a picture and get a feel for what it is like! some of the nicest looking cameras can be a bugger to operate! Personal re-view pages on websites are also good to look at becuase then you can see waht other people who have the camera have said about it! You may also find that purcasing the camera online is cheaper than going into the store. I always go into the store to have a look at the camera and then once ive found the one I want I go home and buy it online - much cheaper.

But basically you cany do any of this without doing your research. your camera is buggered it needs repairing so now you have a choice - repair the old one or buy a new one?

Good luck x