Link to the slightly hopeful Part 1
I wasn’t delusional enough to be particularly hopeful after looking at the results obtained in Part 2, but it only took a glance at the FIRST pic taken in Part 2 daylight test to discover that there were a lot more issues buried inside this camera’s operating system than I had realised.
I REALLY wish one of the mites that took up residence in this camera had not chosen to drop dead on the sensor, and attach itself firmly where it lay.
I only hope it is burning in Hell for its sins.
I would have left things alone but for the spot its corpse left, and had no idea just accessing the sensor to clean it would have resulted in such carnage.
This was the first of a series of pics taken during the day, but was really the only one needed.
This SHOULD have been a perfectly normal pic, well exposed, in sharp focus, with decent colour and in detail, and taken in bright daylight at ISO 80.
Shots like this I would normally expect to be able to zoom in to (and I mean the image, not the view while standing in the street) and read the caption under the registration number – it’s not even possible to see if there even is a caption on this plate!
Instead, it has NONE of those qualities, and is so bad I’d normally go back and reshoot, if possible.
It’s like a low light late evening shot, with poor colour, and no detail. Zooming into the view shows only blotches, and no edges.
I’d almost be happy to bring this home at 11 pm on a summer night, but not when taken at minimum ISO in the middle of the day.
Looking at the data behind the original image would seem to reveal the fundamental problem with all the pics now taken with this camera, and confirm some sort of setting or processing issue.
It seems to have become locked into macro mode, and has a permanent electronic zoom of 3.4x applied to all of its images.
I’ve no idea where this has come from, but may explain why replacing the ‘joypad’ switch panel did not restore operation of the up, down, left, right cursor buttons. They’re not faulty, and it’s actually something inside the brain.
I’ve tried all sorts of resets, even leaving the battery out for months, but it always starts up the same way, after asking for the clock to be set.
I’d persevere, but with those internal setting apparently wrong, and unable to be accessed or altered, the degraded image that results make any effort to deal with other issues pointless.
That’s very disappointing (yes, I could say more, but there’s no point)
I had to think back
How this got so bad.
- Noticed mites walking across the sensor
- Later, noticed the anti-vibration system would jump from end to end at random
- Pondered if these were related
- Mite died on sensor – turned into a permanent feature
- Every pic ruined, decided to clean sensor
- Initially went well, until realisation that sensor had to be aligned with focal plane
This was new, never found with camcorder sensors, and only realised when I noted the sensor was mounted on a ‘floating’ plate, that could be accurately aligned to the plane.
I also realised this was NEVER going to happen, as the alignment screws could not be accessed when the camera was assembled.
Obviously a factory setting, made with a jig that allowed the sensor output to be viewed while it was adjusted, only then could the camera electronics be attached, covering this adjustment.
Oh well, at leat I know, now.
Believe it or not, things only went DOWNHILL after that.
I got so distracted by setting the sensor back in place somewhere that might be close to the correct position, I didn’t see the flat cable for it becoming snagged in one of the body mounting posts, and one of the track being severed.
Suffice to say it took me a LONG time to set up to repair this. Have you seen how fine the tracks are in flat cables that mount into ZIF (zero insertion force) PCB sockets?
Surprisingly, this repair worked, although it looked HORRIBLE. Well, it was a first at this, and with no microscope.
But, things just kept getting worse
Reassembling the camera showed that we had NEW problems to deal with
- The control panel joypad no longer worked
- Turning the rotary encoder just made parameters jump wildly between random values
- The up, down, left, right cursor buttons were dead.
- The Confirm/Select button was dead
A short flat cable connected this to the main PCB, but this tested OK.
I eventually gave in and bought a new panel, and thought this would be an easy fix.
Wrong – while the encoder and Confirm button worked, the cursor keys remained dead. The latter was a relatively minor issue, since most functions were duplicated on the camera’s touchscreen, and I thought the remaining functions were irrelevant, since I had seldom touched the cursor keys anyway.
That sort of arrives at the start of this post, and discovering some sort of failure or corruption of the camera firmware, or perhaps other failures on the PCB, causing the symptoms.
Let go, move on
Much as I admit to hanging on to some things like a dog with a burst ball, I can’t see any future for this one, at least not while it’s stuck in macro mode and applying some sort of 3.4x digital zoom processing to the captured image.
The resulting images are worse than the first real digital camera I ever bought (which is unfair to it, since it shot perfect 3 MP images, as good as anything I capture today – with a working camera!).
In fact, I’d still be using that first camera today (still works perfectly, and 3 MP is plenty if the sensor and lens are good), but for the fact that it is just so slow in operation, only has low ISO sensitivity (so NO low light ability), and the zoom is only 3x, being neither particularly wide at one end, nor long at the other.
I can’t replace it, even if still available – the second-hand price has easily doubled for some reason, and a new one is silly money (I got a lucky bargain a few years back). That might explain the current second-hand price – Amazon still has it for a whopping £525. I got mine, second-hand but brand new, boxed, perfect with all factory pieces, and a proper manual (naughty ones apparently come with badly typewritten documents) for less than one third of that!
The main problem it leaves me with now is one of size.
Lug around a dSLR with a huge lens (even if the body is/was the smallest available), or a bridge camera, almost the same size as the dSLR body (minus a lens), but all knobbly bits that like to get caught in pocket linings.
The GLUM will fade one day
Seeing that price just made me even more depressed – lost a real bargain I didn’t know I had, and can’t replace it.
I’ve looked at mirrorless, but the prices are crazy, and I don’t have a photo business raking in cash 😦
I REALLY hate mites!
Secret Scotland 