Piece of advice...

...to all fellow amateur photographers.

My "pocket camera" Canon G12 got broken because I carried it inside my pocket. First zoom "gradually" stopped working, then all the rest of the controls. Every now and then camera seem to be okay, but after awhile everything halted.

The reason was the dust inside. I had a bad habit of carrying the camera inside my overcoat pockets. The dust from fabrics slowly got inside the camera and caused shortcuts on electric circuits.

Cleansing the camera cost me 142 euros. And because shutter unit also got broken, the whole top of the camera controls had to be replaced.

So, do not carry your pocket camera inside the pocket! Buy a camera bag or at least slip your camera inside a plastic pouch before slipping it into the overcoat pocket.

EDIT: Interesting Russian video to look inside Canon G12 youtu.be/nLs9Jnj3GsQ