The Constant Innovator

Had borrowed a family friend’s digital camcorder, a Panasonic SDR-H21 and it recorded fine once or twice and then had a weird error wherein the lens / focus / zoom was completely unresponsive.

It was recording photos and videos, but the picture was at a fixed focus, and moving the thumb-tab to zoom in and out was completely unresponsive.

Tried a lot of things. Discharging the battery, reseting the camcorder, but nothing worked. The Panasonic website was collosally unhelpful (no support section, apparently nobody has any problems with this product, moreover the H21 model is not listed on their site). I talked to the family friend and we ran through the checklist again, but to no avail. Then, just as a joking aside, he suggested that I shake the camera. I did just that – shaking it from one end to another. Unexpectedly, the camcorder powered itself off.

I had to disconnect the battery to reset it, but when it did come back on, it was working fine!

Detailed notes:

• After the first test run, when it worked fine, the battery was removed and left on the charger. After the green light went off, I plugged it back in and switched on the camera. The lens cover was not taken off and I tried moving the dials through the modes, but it didn’t switch from the video display mode. When it came onto the photo record mode, it still displayed the video display mode.
• The camcorder was complaining a lot that it needed to reset itself when I was switching modes – which I did, but that didn’t help.