video and camera problems

[Al Dente]

Very frustrating day yesterday was.  My Sony HandCam HDR-CX110 will not take a charge.  I plug in the adapter, and the yellow charging light comes on, then after a minute it goes out.  I thought that it was charging, but it did not.  When fully charged, the light turns green.  I tried unplugging the battery pack and re-installing it, thinking that it might not have been seated correctly, but still no charge.  So then, I went to my Canon Powershot SD800IS, it has some limited video capabilities, and that did not work either.  After turning it on, I get a message on the screen that says "Lens Error, Restart Camera".  I shut it off, I took out the battery, I took out the SD card, still the same message.  Any ideas?  Thanks for any advice.

[mark land]

Clean the contacts on the battery and camera and try again, if it still will not charge, then either the battery is bad or your charger and will need to be replaced.  Batteries do have a shelf life or usable life and will go bad, especially when not used continuously and long periods of time between use and charges.
Always make sure to keep batteries charged and when not in use cycle charging times to make sure they stay up.  Some batteries when not used continuous will die and not hold a charge.

[Al Dente]

Thanks Mark.  Bought a new battery, it was going well, then the yellow light died out after a few minutes.  Going to try a new charger next.  The camera is shot.  Not worth the money to get it repaired.  Almost as much as to buy new.  Thanks again for the advice.

[mark land]

Yeah with the price of cameras now it sometimes is just better to dump it and buy a new one.  Not to mention the change in technology that occurs every year as well, sometimes you can get a 1 or 2 year old model at a much reduced price and have a great camera inexpensively.
I dumped all my mini-DV cams and got a new flash memory camera and love it, much easier to use and able to download footage easily to my computer and edit easier as well.  Not to mention with the SD cards you can download them, format and shoot more footage on the same card and just reuse them all the time.  I have about 4 cards for my camera and have not run out of memory room yet.  Got a T external hard drive for my computer and just store all the footage on it when I get back from a trip and it will hold alot more footage then I would ever be able to shoot.  Another nice thing about the card cameras is everytime you push record it stores that segment in a different file so you cannot record over any footage already on the camera if you want to look at it and view it.  Pretty neat actually!

[Al Dente]

Got the wall charger.  Surprisingly enough, a few minutes after each battery was placed in it, they were fully charged.  Now, if the adapter and power cord, and/or the input built into the video camera itself were bad, then the batteries would be dead, and would have required a 6 hour charge.  So, everything does work fine, except for the charging light itself on the camera.  I will keep the wall charger, as it is easier to use than dragging out a 6 foot, 2 piece adapter cord and plugging into the camera.  I will further investigate why the light did not go green, and why the onscreen battery symbol is still on.  Thanks again Mark, your advice is greatly appreciated.  I am definately going to get a T-Byte external harddrive.

[mark land]

Good luck and hope everything works out for ya!