I’ve suspected for a while that the camera L kindly got me for Christmas has a fault.

I only noticed it when I was playing around with HDR images and needed to stray into some of the more advanced features on the camera. I found out I couldn’t turn that feature on. Then checking the flash (which I rarely have ever used on any camera I’ve owned) I found that didn’t work either.

I’d tried the Canon website and logged a call via email which had seemed to disappear after they asked me the opening questions Id already confirmed in the mail. Today I decided to call.

It’s not unusual to be greeted by a foreign accent and Barbara seemed to be from Eastern Europe. I tried to tell her succinctly what the problem was with the camera and what Id done to check it wasn’t me. But no. We had to start from the top of her list. “Is the camera on ?”, she asked. “Is lens cap off ?”, a good question as I’ve done that trick before but not on this occasion.

Eventually we got closer to the part of the script with the word flash in it. “Is flash button on?”, she shouted triumphally. Crestfallen when I said yes she asked for my email address. “You must send it in for fixing”.

Which I guess is what I will have to do. Hoping that they will sort it without the guarantee as that’s not with me and seems very unlikely to be forwarded..