Canon SX230 Communication Error

After taking a lot of pictures in Washington Aquarium, came time to transfer them from Canon PowerShot SX230 HS camera to laptop. And then I was greeted with “Communication Error” displayed on camera’s screen. I tried multiple cables, tried resetting everything, every wiggling motion that I knew, but to no avail.

Quick search on Internet gave hint that this happens when there is too much pictures on camera. I connected SD card directly to computer, deleted some old pictures, reconnected camera and, like magic, it was working again. Happy ending.

For the sake of it, I cannot grasp why idiots who made camera’s firmware thought having 3000 pictures on camera that accepts SDXC cards should be a problem. 16 GB is not even biggest card there is and it was half full. How can you make camera fail on something that should be it’s basic operation?

Even worse they found it necessary to hide such error behind obscure message like “Communication Error”. Which part of that message has any connection to number of files? Only connection what-so-ever was in manual where, as sole source of this message, they said “Images could not be transferred to the computer or printed due to the large amount of images (aprox. 1000) stored on the memory card.” If this is sole source of error, how about giving “Too much files” message. Or “Sorry, but our product is shit if you actually want to transfer images”. Either message would do.

Or, dare I say it, they could fix their broken product…