Late husband's Canon Powershot A40

[Judykaytee]

The viewfinder on my late husband's Canon Powershot A40 shows what looks like a video cam screen with three little blue squares across the middle. I "believe" it is in video mode but cannot figure how to change it to digital (still) mode.

I took it to a camera shop and they told me it needs a repair and cleaning. The repair shop may very well be correct but, because it's about 5 years old, I think I would replace it before repairing it.

As far as I know my husband never had any problems with it.

Can someone give me some advice? I have never used the camera and can't find the instruction book. I was told there is a little button the top that switches it but I do not see anything like that.

[SmartWombat]

Canon have the manual online.
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/co...0&modelid=8288

There's a control dial on the back (many other canons have that dial on the top) to start out try turning it to AUTO.

[another view]

It could be that the dial was bumped at some point and is in a video mode. Sounds like that may be the case. Aside from that I think you're right about replacement rather than repair of a five year old camera.

[SmartWombat]

Found it !

In mode P or M there are three autofocus frames.
If you can see all three then that means the intelligent auto-focus is on.
The camera chooses one of the three to focus on depending on the image.

See page 77 of the pdf manual.