Camera Repair: Completed!

[Crimson Sky]

When I was contracted to write my book The MaximumPC Guide to Extreme PC Mods (http://www.amazon.com/Maximum-Guide-Extreme-Mods/dp/0789731924/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt/002-7915945-0274432?ie=UTF8), I was also responsible for professionaly photographing almost everything you see in the book. This meant buying a good camera and a lighting kit as well.

After much research I purchased a Minolta Dimage A-1 5.0MP. Thank the modding gods that the camera took awesome photos for its price range ($800)and worked as expected.

Fate would have it that Konica Minolta ceased the camera business after countless years, and just when tens of thousands of cameras (Sony, Minolta, Canon, etc) that used a certain type of Sony CCD image sensor had to be recalled. My Dimage A-1 was among those that had problems--but only recently!

I got very lucky that it lasted for the entire shoot with no problems.

The point of this long winded post is to point out that Sony has made good on their recall and have taken my camera in for repairs at their cost, even after Minolta ceased camera production. Here is a copy of their email i received this morning:

*********************
Dear PAUL CAPELLO,

This message is to notify you our Customer Satisfaction Center in LAREDO, TX has received your product. We are sorry to hear you are having problems with your product. It is our goal to try to make your service experience a positive one. Listed below is your workorder number and our contact information. If you need to contact us directly or want to use our Service Website to check for a status update please use your workorder number as a reference. For your convenience we will be sending you periodic status updates by email as your status changes. Thank you for choosing Sony and feel free to contact us if you have any questions regarding your service request.

Sincerely,
Sony Service

Customer Information
Workorder: WCxxxxx
Model: DIGA1
Serial: 423xxxxxx

Sony Service Contact Information
Location: LAREDO, TX
Phone number: (866) 357-6230 7:00AM - 4:30PM CST
E-Mail: mailto:SONYSVCLRD@AM.SONY.COM
Service website: http://eservice.sony.com/webrma/web/index.do

******************************

Sony gets a bad rap once in a while for many reasons, but in this case, so far the quasi-personalized service is top notch. Let's see if the camera gets back to me in working order. :up:

[ajmilton]

it'll work, but when you download pictures to your computer, it'll install a root kit
also, all the photos will be drm-encumbered

:D

gl on getting a functional camera :P

[Crimson Sky]

**** I didnt think of that.....

[Aero]

lol. Sony can do things right every once in a while. Good luck on getting that Camera back. It deffinatly seemed to have been worth the money though, judging from the book.

[xdxforever]

Its probably because once they bought minolta that placed them in the position of having a very professional general market. pro photographers expect much more than many other tech users as general groups and they also spend in bigger chunks, that is $1000 lenses and cameras etc. for each piece.

[Razors Edge]

I only buy from sony if its Television related. Thats what they do best.

Really, When you buy a sony computer or camra, you really think you're getting something better.

If I buy a television, its going to be sony.
If I buy a MP3 player, its going to Ipod.
If I buy a Camra, its going to be Kodak.

You either get what I mean by reading that, you you'll never get it.

[simon275]

Yeah for home entertainment sound system and television.

I always go sony. I even used a sony vaio latptop in my last two years of school. It looked really small and flimsy but it had great battery life. And after two years of punishment being dropped and number of times falling of desks etc. It still works I use it to study on.

Once we ordered a LCD tv from sony and it came in black and we wanted grey plus it made a high pitched whining sound. So we rang sony up and said yeah are tv came in the wrong colour and it makes a high pitched whining sound but its not that much of a problem.

So two days later a man arrived from DHL gave us a new TV straight from fresh from their distribution centre in Singapore. And then a sony man turned up took the old TV. And set it up the new one for us even though it was easy to do. (we set up the old one ourselves). And he gave us $250 dollar voucher that can be used on any sony product. We went and bought a new expensive sony DVD player. :bunny:

Thats thing you can buy a noname brand product and it may be the same as sony's product and cheaper. But there will be no customer service unlike sony products.

[klingelton]

i gotta say im a bit of a sony freak, i do tend to class them as reliable products that have decent to great customer services. i've got a psp, ps2, ps one, sony ericsson w810i mobile phone, sony trinatron 17" crt monitor and probably more sony stuff lying around somewhere! never had a problem with any of them.

[onelegout]

Yeah crimson - sony have REALY upped their game recently. They've always been about quality and ive received fantastic customer service from them in the past!
Konica minolta's customer service was excelent too though! It's a pity that the company folded but it's fantastic that SONY took the company up and gave it new life!



Really, When you buy a sony computer or camra, you really think you're getting something better.

If I buy a television, its going to be sony.
If I buy a MP3 player, its going to Ipod.
If I buy a Camra, its going to be Kodak.

You either get what I mean by reading that, you you'll never get it.

Actualy, Sony aquired Konica-Minolta, and have just brought out the Sony Alpha-100; a vastly improved version of the Konica-Minolta 5D.
http://www.fotal.pl/thumbs/Sprzet/sony/alpha/460/SonyA100_front.jpg
http://www.fotal.pl/thumbs//Sprzet/sony/alpha/455/SonyA100_back.jpg

I have just bought the Sony Alpha-100 (and a 10-20mm sigma wide angle lense ;) ) to replace my konica-minolta 5D (I bought the Konica-Minolta 5D about three years ago and it was fantastic! there was nothing wrong with it I just decided to upgrade)
In my (and many other's) opinion his camera so fantastic that it is on the verge of being perfect. It's very well priced too, with a body-only pricetag (in the uk) of 550 quid (or 600 quid with a very nice stock lense)

I also own a Kodak V550
http://www.cametaauctions.com/ebay/kodak/digital/V550/images/V550_02.jpg

It's a very nice camera with an excelent build quality and awesome screen. So basicly
Sure, sony arn't currently top of the fashion/compact camera market, but they make a damn nice Digital SLR - unlike kodak.

- H

[Crimson Sky]

It's a very nice camera with an excelent build quality and awesome screen. So basicly
Sure, sony arn't currently top of the fashion/compact camera market, but they make a damn nice Digital SLR - unlike kodak.

- H

That Sony does look really nice. Sony's pocket digicams are just superior as well. HUGE LCD's and great lenses.

Konica Minolta did NOT fold, just the consumer camera division--they will be continuing to manufacture imaging equipment for the medical fields, as well as copiers.

[Zephik]

lol

Well I sure feel dumb right now. When I was reading through this I kept thinking that Konica Minolta was a national bank. :dead:

Is this what you guys are talking about?

http://konicaminolta.com/releases/2006/0119_03_01.html

Also I think I just found the most exspensive camera in the world lol

And it has reviews!? Why would you need such a powerful and exspensive camera?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16830120190

-SF

[Crimson Sky]

Also I think I just found the most exspensive camera in the world lol

And it has reviews!? Why would you need such a powerful and exspensive camera?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16830120190

-SF


That camera is not that expensive--Consider that the lenses are $500-$2500 each (it comes with 0 lenses) and now you're talking pricey. But still cheap compared to the cameras that are used for fashion and product photography, which start at over 10k for the body and thousands each for the lenses. These pro cameras take image files that are so huge, they are hardwired to Macs and capture directly to the harddrive. Images are usually in the 2-4 GB range per file.

That camera you linked us to is for basic ENG (electronic news gathering) field work--something a newspaper photographer would use.

Pro cameras are light years ahead of consumer or even "prosumer" cameras as far as quality. Sure, these inexpensive pocket cams have similar crossover technology from their pro-level bretheren, but they are compeletely different products. High megapixels mean very little, iuts all about the lens and the CCD chips inside.

[ajmilton]

meh, 7k ain't all that expensive.

http://www.photoblogr.com/hasselblad/h3d/

expected to retail between $30k and 50k

:)

[Zephik]

:eek::eek::eek:

That is absolutely fascinating! But only because I had no freaking clue! Geeze... that is so much money!

OKay, here is newb question. What exactly are megapixels? Are they unlimited, as in, is there a megapixel that we can go to but not further or can we just keep going and going with the development of technology? What is the highest megapixel we have reached to date?

-SF

[ajmilton]

answer to most "newb questions": google or wikipedia. :P

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel#Megapixel

[crazybillybob]

:eek::eek::eek:

That is absolutely fascinating! But only because I had no freaking clue! Geeze... that is so much money!

OKay, here is newb question. What exactly are megapixels? Are they unlimited, as in, is there a megapixel that we can go to but not further or can we just keep going and going with the development of technology? What is the highest megapixel we have reached to date?

-SF

I can answer the first part of your question. a megapixel is just a million pixels. Here's a more detailed answer from Wikipedia.
"Megapixel

A megapixel is 1 million pixels, and is a term used not only for the number of pixels in an image, but also to express the number of sensor elements of digital cameras or the number of display elements of digital displays. For example, a camera with an array of 2048×1536 sensor elements is commonly said to have "3.1 megapixels" (2048 × 1536 = 3,145,728).

Digital cameras use photosensitive electronics, either Charge-coupled device (CCD) or Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors, consisting of a large number of single sensor elements, each of which records a measured intensity level. In most digital cameras, the sensor array is covered with a patterned color filter mosaic having red, green, and blue regions in the Bayer filter arrangement, so that each sensor element can record the intensity of a single primary color of light. The camera interpolates the color information of neighboring sensor elements, through a process called demosaicing, to create the final image. These sensor elements are often called "pixels", even though they only record 1 channel (only red, or green, or blue) of the final color image. Thus, a so-called N-megapixel camera that produces an N-megapixel image provides only one-third of the information that an image of the same size could get from a scanner. Thus, certain color contrasts may look fuzzier than others, depending on the allocation of the primary colors (green has twice as many elements as red or blue in the Bayer arrangement).

In contrast to conventional image sensors, the Foveon X3 sensor uses three layers of sensor elements, so that it detects red, green, and blue intensity at each array location. This structure eliminates the need for de-mosaicing and eliminates the associated image artifacts, such as color blurring around sharp edges. Citing the precedent established by mosaic sensors, Foveon counts each single-color sensor element as a pixel, even though the native output file size has only one pixel per three camera pixels[1]. With this method of counting, an N-megapixel Foveon X3 sensor therefore captures the same amount of information as an N-megapixel Bayer-mosaic sensor, though it packs the information into fewer image pixels, without any interpolation."

As for the last part of the question????? Don't know!

CrazyBillyBob

[Zephik]

So basically the Human Eye is friggen amazing.

lol

...and I have two of them! I suddenly feel extremely wealthy. :D

-SF

[onelegout]

^^ hahahah true!

That hasselblad is mindblowing! I got the chance to use a REALY nice medium format film hasselblad recently (120mmx120mm black and white film).
The fixed-focus lense was SO much fun and the shutter release is a real CLUNK when you push it) - It had no light meter either so I had to use a seperate one which was great! I developed the film myself and it came out pretty well but my college dont have enlargers good enough to make prints from the film!:(

[a.Bird]

If I buy a television, its going to be sony.
If I buy a MP3 player, its going to Ipod.
If I buy a Camra, its going to be Kodak.

You either get what I mean by reading that, you you'll never get it.
Sorry to hijack this but personally, I think the iPods are a @#%* load of $%#!&. They are for the pseudo-suave who think flashy aqua candy = high performance. I will admit that the click wheel is innovative and I love it but when comparing any iPod to an equal competitor in price, the battery life of the iPod is terrible, the accessories are not only excessive and pointless but overpriced as well, and you get a lot less functionality for your buck. Go with Creative or Cowon.

I agree with Sony for televisions and television equipment, but IMO they've even got Kodak beat for cameras, high and low end.

[simon275]

Sony TV's LCD CRT
Sony DVD players
Sony VCR's
PS, PS2, PSP
Sony LCD monitor
Sony stereo's

[DaveW]

Interestingly, i read that they've recently developed a way of using a single pixel sensor to take all the photographs-i don't know if this is the same RGB sensor method they currently use, meaning 3 single pixels, but...it would save a lot of money and battery power.

-Dave

[ajmilton]

yeah, i saw something about that too, dave ... on /. i think

time to see if i can dig up the link. :P

edit: and here it is
http://physicsbuzz.blogspot.com/2006/10/single-pixel-camera.html

it's apparently damned slow, big surprise :p takes a while to record an image one pixel at a time

[nil8]

This has turned into the Sony thread.
The trinitron CRT monitor series was astounding.
I have a 22 inch 80+ lb behemoth that still works from the early 90s.

Here's an intresting point of debate that's somewhat on topic.
What about the differences between film and digital? Will film still be used 30 years down the road or will all cameras adopt digital imaging?

[ajmilton]

the differences between film and digital, to me, seem to be mostly like the differences between vinyl and cd's.
audiophiles, and other music-recording purists hugely prefer vinyl because it has more "soul" to the recordings - the recording is physical, sounds are produced by ridges on the record, as opposed to digital.

i guess the analogy would be "photophiles" - people that prefer film because it "more accurately captures the picture" or whatever. i personally feel a bit less attuned to this perspective because of a couple reasons:
a) >most< of the use of photography these days is journalistic. photos are run in magazines or newspapers or websites, and don't have to be "perfect." in fact, a lot of these media outlets reduce the resolution of the image to save on bandwidth for online stuff and printing costs for physical media. thus, no reason for most of the photographers out there to restrict themselves to film when they can pop a lot of lower-res pictures
b) digital has the option for EXTREMELY high resolution. this contrasts with the CD vs Vinyl in my opinion. digital cameras don't have to grow in size much to greatly increase the available resolution. for a film camera to increase the resolution, it generally needs to increase the size of the film - look at the size of a medium/large-format film camera vs a 35mm camera.
c) referencing (a) a bit, digital cameras are much better for sports shooting. they have much higher capacity between reloads with flash media and microdrives, and can shoot, generally, at a much higher rate. sports action tends to happen so fast you have to have a really quick shutter speed and a low exposure time.

so yeah. my opinions. :p

i'm sure 30 years down the road people will still be shooting film. luddites annd purists are everywhere :)

anecdotally, a buddy of mine who is heavily into digital photography in sports, recently picked up a large-format camera for the fun of it. turned out some damned nice pictures. it looks to me that digital is becoming the "tool" and film is becoming the "toy"

[a.Bird]

You took the words right out of my mouth. However I believe that film will be completely phased out within a decade from now as many companies, including Kodak, have already announced a discontinuation of their line of light sensitive photo papers for film enlargement.

I think this is fantastic. Outside of hobbyists and purists, film is really just old technology. If 10 to 20 years from now I can shoot a photo on a palm sized camera that has 100x higher resolution than fine 35mm film of today, download it to my PC in two seconds where I can then archive it forever, choosing to print it out in an array of formats (wallet, index card, letter, poster, t-shirt transfer, sticker, decal, transparency, anything else under the sun)... I find that simply amazing.

[Crimson Sky]

My camera was returned to me today by the Sony repair center in Texas via 3 day air. Upon first inspection I was surprised how clean it was--not a fingerprint on it, nor a smudge. The lens was cleaned and polished. According to the document enclosed, the CCD was replaced.

Some test photos proved that all seems back in working order. There was a letter of apology accompanied by the invoice, as well as a number to call in case there are further problems.

I'll field test the camera tomorrow and make sure its 100%. I'm very satisfied so far with the repair/recall service. When I called on Monday to ask about the repair, I got a live person on the second ring who told me that the camera was on its way.

Live people = :up:

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0000BYB5X.03.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

[ajmilton]

damnit, you just had to go and screw with my sony-bashing :(

grats on the (apparently) successful repair :P that's a nice-looking camera

i've actually got a minolta 35mm that's older than i am, my dad picked up in the phillipines or guam or something during vietnam. still turns out some good pictures, considering that i'm a horrible photographer :) minolta is good stuff

[SgtM]

<drool>mmm... Crimson's camera.....</drool>

[onelegout]

Nice camera crimson!

As far as film fading out goes.. I doubt it will happen any time soon!
consumer digital definately has a long, long way to go before it reaches the quality of film...
If you've ever tried to take a long exposure with digital (By long, I mean 3 hours kinda thing...) you'll be very disapointed with the results because of the huge amount of digital noise.
I prefer film for anything that Im going to get printed.
H

[a.Bird]

I agree with you for the time being about horrendous amounts of digital noise but you must consider the growth of technology these days. It seems like everything is growing exponentially and at such a rate, where only 3 or 4 years ago I paid $300 for a digital camera that took 640*480 max images with loads of noise, I see amazing things happening with only a decade. I'm considering all factors of photography. Long run cost, development time, lab productivity, archiving, media applications. Resolution may still be a gripe of digital cameras but if that is soon taken care of, what does film really have left? I'm not a digital snob, just curious. I mean it's not like we are still etching stone these days. We are taking energy and turning it into the most efficient form as possible for any output you can imagine.

[Crimson Sky]

i say good riddance to film. in my younger days, it cost a small fortune just to run a darkroom out of my apartment as a hobby. Horrible stinky expensive chemicals and paper--not to mention a good enlarger cost a lot as well.

Film had its day, and like the dinosaurs, will soon be extinct, or in the hands of people who use it for artistic novelty. The creative power that digital tools has given us is staggering. I'm not saying its given anyone taste and talent (*Utube* for instance is filled with 99.999% digital feces) but it has given people with creativity a relatively lowcost outlet.

Will the digital canvas ever replace brushes and paint? I hope not. But ever see the prices for art supplies?. It's ****ing highway robbery.