My wife and I bought this camera to take photos of our first child. It took very nice pictures for the first year. Then, suddenly, it began showing only a black screen with icons. After a quick web search, I found that this is a common and expensive problem with this particular Canon product. We are very disappointed that Canon has not addressed this increasingly common problem with the S2IS model. I wish we had known of this issue before we spent $400 on the camera...