Zoom Error, Finepix s700

[wannabehorsephotographer]

My camera keeps telling me Zoom Error when I turn it on. I can view images on the camera fine, but it won't take pictures or video.

When I checked Fuji's site, it said to turn the camera off and on several times and if that doesn't work (it didn't) to check with the store you bought the camera from. In my case that is Walmart and I'm not sure what they would know to do. And the nearest camera repair is 1.5 hour away.

I had dropped the camera the morning before I noticed I couldn't use it when a strap off another bag broke. However, the camera was in a padded bag and only a few feet off the ground (could this still be the culprit?).

Any help would be appreciated. It's not a horribly expensive camera, but I enjoy my little Fuji, I hope I can get it working again

[mrodgers]

I looked around, since I also have an S5700 (Ritz Camera version). I saw a lot of questions about this and most responses were basically this sometimes happens to superzooms if dropped or jarred in anyway causing the zoom mechanicals to jam up. Take it to a repair dealer, of which you could probably just buy a new camera for the same amount of money.

[wannabehorsephotographer]

Thanks for looking it up. I didn't think to dig deeper.

That's what I was afraid of too - the stinkin thing didn't even hit that hard

[creativechaos]

The S700 is the third FujiFilm camera I've owned. I've had 2 point & shoot cameras with the same exact problem. The ZoomError is dreaded LOL Seriously, on the point & shoot if you pushed the lense back into the camera, turned it off and back on it worked. Unfortunately with the S700, all lenses are internal and you can't do that. Sadly (and I HATE to even say this!) but the way that I got my P&S to work was to *gulp* basically throw it on the ground (not from like 8 feet up!) and it worked after that. I'm not saying it's technical, but...it worked for me.

By the way, I LOOOOOOOVE my S700! I'm hoping to learn a lot more about it.