Hi,
I'm hoping someone might be able to help me. I actually had not planned on trying this yet, but my camera got a little wet and started having some lens errors. The lens now seems to be retracting OK, but the camera whenever I turn it on either with the play button or on/off button shows a clock. From there I can now go into photo and playback mode but most of the buttons don't do anything and the zoom is nonfunctional. Something is clearly wrong. Is there a way to "get it back to normal?" Thanks for any advice and apologies for posting it here but I can't find any other reference to this issue anywhere else and seems no one but you guys would have any idea how to help.
Your camera has hardware damage, so this isn't really on topic to this thread, and CHDK won't be able to fix it.
The clock showing might be an indication it thinks some of the buttons are down all the time. It would not be surprising if water damage caused this. You might be able to transplant a keypad from another camera (check ebay for ones that are damaged in other ways, e.g. broken screen, lens etc). It's also possible that the keys haven't been damaged but are just stuck or have some crud from the water preventing them from functioning. In that case, taking it apart and cleaning it might sort things out.
It's up to you to decide if you are capable of performing any physical repairs. These cameras are quite delicate and not made to be easily user serviceable, but you can find tear down instructions for many on the net. You might want to see how much Canon service would want to deal with it instead.
