camera goes blank in bright light

[troyer16]

My brother has a canon point and shoot. Its a powershoot something IS. We were at a game yesterday, outdoor hockey, and it was bright white ice and bright lights. If you tried to take a picture the screen went blank black and you couldnt take one. If you metered in a darker area, such as indoors, it worked fine. It was strange because without hitting any buttons, as soon as you raised the camera outdoors to take a pictures, the screen live view screen went blank? I tried the viewfinder and it didnt take the picture. Any help?

[pickupman92]

You may want to give this a read and see if it sounds like this.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=238911

Have you tried the camera in automatic mode and still getting a black screen? possibly not metering it correctly, which is causing problems.

-Quentin

[troyer16]

Thanks for the link. It was in automatic mode the whole time. He got this for christmas, think it could be the problem?

[troyer16]

By the way, its an A570 IS

[Jon]

Which Automatic mode? What was the ISO setting? It "went blank" as, you had a picture on the LCD, but it disappeared when you lifted the camera, or as whenever you tried to look at the LCD outside it was black? Or was he turning it on, and after the startup image everything went blank? Outdoors, LCD displays are very hard to read because they essentially black out in bright light. He may need to turn up the backlight brightness setting

[troyer16]

Green auto mode. ISO was 80. Yes, if the camera was pointed at the ground it displayed in the lcd screen but as soon as you lifted it it went blank (black). It would still display the settings on the screen just not an image. If you turned it off then on (outside) it still came up blank. I do not think it was the back light setting because 1. It would not take pictures, even using the viewfinder. 2. If you slowly lifted the camera to the brighter areas outside, you could see where it would get brighter (on the screen) and once you got to a certain point of lifting it it would go blank?

[Jon]

Although you were outside, unless you were in heated stands with very cold surrounding air, I woudn't expect that. Was the camera somewhere it'd be warm while not being used, but could chill down rapidly once you lifted it up to shoot?

[troyer16]

nope,

[troyer16]

Its working fine indoors now, with new batteries. I will have to try it outside in the bright snow tomorrow to see how it goes. I cant imagine the batteries being the issue for this.

[troyer16]

thinking of just calling staples

[Jon]

Cold weather's very hard on batteries, especially alkalines. Have you got some NiMH or lithiums you can try it with?