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2026-09-21 Ion 301 Digital Camera

    I picked up this Ion 301 digital camera at a garage sale.
    Normally I would have passed on it, but circumstances placed me in a position I was almost duty bound to take it. I had been at the garage sale the day before. There hadn’t been any cameras, so I said, “I normally just buy cameras.” The very friendly ladies said they hadn’t even thought about selling cameras at this garage sale. One of the ladies volunteered to bring in her cameras the following day. Another said she knew her husband had an underwater camera he was never going to use again. She said she would ask him if she could bring it in.
    This was at a city garage sale, and I live 50 kilometers away in a small town. But I had dropped my wife off to house sit for the day, so I could return the following day. 
When I returned one lady had brought in three cameras, while the underwater lady said her husband hadn’t wanted to part with his camera. The three cameras were nothing outstanding—a Canon PowerShot 10 meg camera, a Polaroid 600 Business Edition and this Ion 301 digital camera—but I felt an obligation to make her trouble worth while. She asked what I would offer for the three. I led with $2, she countered with $10 and we settled for $8. I guess you could estimate i spent $3 each for the two better cameras and $2 for the Ion 301.
    Trouble was the Ion 301 was sold as not working. The nice lady had put brand new AA batteries in the two digital cameras and only the Canon came to life. To her credit she sold the cameras with the batteries included.
    Upon close examination one side of the battery compartments metal contact strip was crusted with battery leakage. I used a blade to simply scrape the surface down to the metal. 
    The camera came to life! It took a 4 G SD card, but it had difficulty displaying the images. I strongly suspect it would prefer a 256 M card. 
    Although the Ion 301 has nothing in particular to recommend it, it is sometimes just as satisfying getting a bad camera to work again as simply buying a working great camera.

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