Have you ever experienced an "Error 99" message while shooting with your Canon camera? I read on another website that it could mean anything from dirty lens contacts to broken hardware, or in the words of the camera "I don't know exactly what's wrong with me, so I just display 'Error 99'." In my case, the error occurred first when we were on the Maldives. Just like the error message told me to, I switched the camera off and on and it worked again until the next day. Then the error message popped up sporadically and it got really annoying.

When we came back we had a shoot with Anthony and Andrew, the camera really pissed me off. After every other shot, the camera refused service and didn't even work after a restart or battery replacement (the camera was protected from rain during the shoot). Frequently after a successful restart, although the exposure was displayed correctly on-screen, you could hear that the shutter was open for much longer.

When I came home after the shoot, the camera was officially dead, meaning it wouldn't switch on at all. So I brought it to the Canon customer care (lucky me the camera died three weeks before the warranty expired) and it took them two and a half weeks to repair it. It seems to have been a mechanical problem because they replaced the circuit board and the shutter curtain. I wonder if it would have been less work to just give me a new body

What do we learn from all this? Even if it's a Canon, don't lose the warranty card