Lens will not close

Try these procedures.

Try the procedures in this tip.

It shows that the System Control Section got faulty needs to be fixed technically, i advised to take it to the nearest cannon service center for assistance.
Good Luck

Don't play around with that lens, you can do more damage to the camera and focus with some of the stuff people tell you to try. Your camera just needs to be serviced and you'll be working great again. The shop that specializes in service for the powershots is: camerasandparts.com They're amazing if you need a hand with one of these, that's all they deal with. They have your exact SD850 Lens Error, Restart Camera problem on their site. Good luck, they're the place for help with a powershot, best of luck with it.

This is probably THE most common failure among digital cameras. There's a halfway chance of fixing it yourself, described here: http://camerarepair.blogspot.com/2007/12/fixing-lens-error-on-digital-camera.html

did you try and take the battery out and outting them back in
might be worth a try

Take a look at the suggestions at the top of page 122 of the Advanced Camera User Guide. The suggestion is that the cause may have been that the camera was still on when the memory card/battery cover was opened. Try closing the cover and then turning the camera off and then on again. Hope this helps.

Jack

There could be a number of reasons for the lens error. ie. . sand in camera, impact damage etc. Typically the lens can be dissasembled and repaired by a competent camera repair technician. If you are certain that you did not damage the camera in any way I would send it back to canon for a warranty repair. If you however think you could have damaged it you are probably looking at around $100 to repair the camera. Hope this helps!

Hi

what you are seeing is a generic message that means there is some sort of problem with the lens, it could happen in many different ways such as sand or dirt in the lens gears.

If your camera is less than a year old, please call Canon and have them fix it under warranty!

If your camera is more than a year old and out of warranty, a couple solutions would be to either buy a defective camera online and make one good camera from the two if you can do that sort of thing yourself, or secondly have it repaired by somebody.

Don't bother trying to send the camera to Canon for repair out of warranty (though you can call them and verify what I'm about to say) because they will want $150+ to do the repair for you. Parts are not cheap to buy from them.

I know of one very affordable digital camera repair business... because I own it. The name is Darntoothysam com, feel free to check us out, we are on that big auction website also (I don't plug their name for free), our seller ID is 'darntoothysam'. If you Google "darntoothysam" you will find us.

We have your repair listed as a package in our store for about $70. This covers a new lens, and return shipping of your camera! We even give a 45 day warranty on parts and labor. If you think you can use us then please check us out, even if you need to ask more questions then please feel free to contact me.

Hope this helps,

Thomas
Darntoothysam com

Defective mechanism, a stucked mechanism is present. camcorder are smart it can detects error and shuts down itself for safety. earlier models dominoes the defect if the user is not quick enough to react when something goes wrong with the camera. You need professional service to fix it.