Why the Canon SD1000 is a Failure (with a Capital "F")

Yesterday MY Canon SD1000 bit the dust. Lo-and-behold, it was while in operation by The Girl. Note that the last time one of our Canon SD1000’s bit the dust, it was also in her possession. Evidence that she’s the one at fault? Sadly, no.

Since we’re down to a total of ZERO working, warrantied cameras in our possession, I figured “what the heck” and opened it up. Worst I could do was break an already-too-broke-to-function camera. Best I could do was possibly fix it.

Although the things have failed multiple times and I am no longer happy with them – nor have I been for quite some time – I must say that in taking it apart, I had to marvel at the feat of engineering that is fitting that much camera into that little a frame. Overall, bravo to the engineering whizzes that designed that.

click for a larger version

However, whoever made the decision to use plastic on the lens assembly and gears, a big F*CK YOU. You’re the main reason that the damned cameras fail so frequently and regularly. It’s plastic. It’s thin. It’s weak. When it comes across some foreign debris – be it even just dust – it will inevitably be the case that the debris is stronger than the plastic. What happens when you get miniscule bits of strong, foreign debris in the middle of weak plastic parts? The plastic gives way. It stretches like a pole dancer at the Strip Club, and scratches like sand in your crotch at the beach, and the plastic basically just becomes a deformed case of junk. So, reason #1 why the Canon SD1000 is junk, we have to list as “the decision to use PLASTIC for the lens & gear assemblies.”

Reason #2 is the fact that they decided against lubrication. Yes that’s right, Canon in all their infinite wisdom decided that lubricating delicate, precision, constantly-moving parts was a bad idea. Because we all know what happens when you do that: the moving parts tend to last longer and work more smoothly over their useful life. OK, so reason #2, we’re set on “decision not to lubricate moving parts.”

There’s a Reason #3, too. Has to do with tolerances. You see – or hell, maybe you don’t the pictures are kind of sh!tty, but more on that later – all of the parts of the lens simply slip into one another; slip-fits. The thing is for that to work, there has to be an entry port for each “nub” as well as the path itself. The way it’s designed, at full-stop the nubs are essentially sitting halfway in and halfway out of their pathway, so any little movement in any direction but one can easily cause the assembly to lock up. What they should have done was to make it so that the entry and end points were well outside of the ‘normal operating range’ of the mechanism to begin with, that way even with the lens at full-stop either way, all the parts are still safely stowed away in a controlled pathway. They didn’t do this. Hence, Reason #3 is “Lack of proper tolerances.”

Anyway, so that’s the story of me taking apart my Canon SD1000, “Super-Suck Edition.” There is of course the issue of what to do next. We need/want cameras. I may not be a math whiz, but it would seem to me like [Reason #1 + Reason #2 + Reason #3] = Buy a Nikon next time, which is looking likely. This is what The Girl is looking at currently. I’m looking at either that myself, or this, or maybe even this. Whatever it is, it’s going to be a “Not Canon!”

How did I get the pictures of the assemblies without another working camera? Easy. I do have a working camera. Sort of. It’s an Apple built-in iSight camera on my MacBook. I know they’re not that high-quality and they’re a little dark, but it’s meant for internet chatting not for photography, I’m just glad it will do in a pinch as needed. Heck if/when I do get a new camera, maybe I’ll update this post with better versions of these pics.

But I wouldn’t hold your breath on that. My couch is still not back together yet, either.

There you have it: All the reasons why the Canon SD1000 sucks, and probably why every other Canon ELPH model sucks. You know what, this is sort of an example of what I like about Apple. Yeah I know they don’t make cameras and this post had very little to do with Apple at all (if at all). But if they did make cameras, they’d have looked at the assemblies and said “to HELL with plastic gears & assemblies! Let’s use BIG-ASS F*CKING lasers to cut solid pieces of aluminum to fit!”

They build success, not failure. Canon...