Jenoptik JD 1300d Review

Overall Rating

Ease of use and picture quality

re-occuring fault with two seperate cameras, buy with caution.

I had the Jenoptik camera a week and all was well. I found it really easy to use, and was impressed by the picture quality. I was however disappointed when on the second week i went to use it and upon turning it on it kept turning itself off. directly after the battery icon and the stars came up on the small screen indicating the camera was on, it just as quickly went blank and switched off. This left me unable to take any pictures. I returned it to the retailer who gave me an identical camera in replacement, a month later the exact same fault happened again. Either i am the unluckiest guy ever to buy this particular camera or the there is a serious fault in the camera`s make-up. Either way i will be staying clear of this model in future.

Members' Comments onKenny McGovern.'s Review

• Ian Cunningham. on 10th Apr 2003

  I had the same problem, but then discovered that if you use a top of the range battery this fault will not happen. It only happens when using cheap batteries.

• Kenny McGovern. on 11th Apr 2003

  Ian thank you for that information if it is correct then i need to say my review is totally rendered useless, I still have the second camera i will get some expensive batteries and try again. I am amazed the retailer didnt suggest this at my first visit. Thanks again. Kenny.

• Shadow. on 30th May 2003

  I also bought the jenoptik camera and had the same problem. Almost an hour after installing new batteries the camera would start to turn itself off instantly after being switched on. I have tried everything from top the range batteries to rechargable ones with no joy. Not only this fault but I had difficulty downloading the pictures using Windows Me however I managed to overcome this, but now I have windows Xp and it does not recognise the camera connected on a USB cable as being a removable disk so how do I get the pictures? I am dismayed that Jenoptik do not see fit to have a website that has downloadable drivers to update some of their older cameras !
  I have had this camera for a long time and therefore it was not cheap and I am totally disappointed by it. If anyone has an answer to any of my questions please let me know.

• Kenny McGovern. on 1st Jun 2003

  Shadow if you read above you will see i had and unfortunately (STILL have) the problem of the camera turning itself off the instant its turned on despite trying every battery out there as you did.
  
  However on the problem of getting your pictures downloaded to the pc using winXP (my system also) Heres how i overcame the hardware not recognised problem,
  
  First turn the dial on the top of the camera to the pc icon - next insert the usb cable to the camera (but not the computer at this point) - turn the camera on (hopefully it stays on knowing how unpredictable it is lol) - Now with the camera switched on and your top dial turned to pc - plug the usb cable to the pc.............hopefully it will bring up the window that lets you chose to download your pictures......carry on from there ....your pictures will end up in your ` My Pictures folder` from there you can move them to a photo suite program and do your stuff editing. Hope you have some success with this let me know how it turns out mate.
  
  I echo your statement regarding the jenoptic website and their lack of drivers for this camera i am totally disillusioned and feel i could have got a much simpler camera to operate for less money...Which was my whole point in buying this camera....idiot proof use?....yeah right.

• bobrcj on 27th Jan 2004

  Have had much the same problems with downloading pictures using ME on a Dell GX1. However, having installed the only driver ever issued for this camera and got nowhere, tried connecting with the camera switched on using the same cable I'm using for my USB BAR flash memory device and rebooted leaving the camera switched on and hey Presto! the removable disk icon in 'my computer' window appeared and I was able then to download as normal. Conclusions: It would seem the 1015 win98 USB BAR driver is compatable! Worth investigating don't you think?
  
  Bob Jones