Camera Disaster in the Lakes!

The weekend found me in a rather wet Lake District to do some photography along Derwent Water at Keswick.

As usual, I was using my Canon Powershot G12, when I ran in to some problems.  

The zoom function (one of its main plus-points) began to play up.  It wouldn't zoom.  Thinking I'd accidentally knocked some sort of setting, I tried to check the menu, but the menu button wouldn't work either.  It seemed to be stuck on trying to calculate the focus, and wouldn't take the photo. The camera hadn't got wet or anything, it had just stopped working.

Checking online later, it turns out that a number of people have also experienced this problem, read here. Annoyingly, it can be intermittent, and seems to be caused by sticking buttons.   Now if you can't take a shot with a camera, then you've missed the shot.  It's no use having an intermittently working camera, and I can't find a way of getting it to definately keep working again.

So here's my advice.

1.  always take a spare camera, and take shots with that camera as well.  Then you'll have two sets of reference material (or one if one camera gives up).  Take cameras that have different functions to the other, eg a bigger zoom, different filters, larger sensor.

2. always take a spare battery (charged).

3.  always take a spare memory card.  Or two.

4.  always take a spare assistant to take different photos of the same scenes.  (Unfortunately, I didn't have option 4 at the weekend...)

And if you've had similar G12 problems, and can offer advice/solutions/a shoulder to cry on, I'd love to hear from you.