CCD fix

At the Homcoming I turned my digital camera on, only to see the view appearing to melt and drip down the view finder/LCD screen:eek:. After playing with it for a while, I could get it to take a photo, but only intermitently:(. Over the next day it continued to deteriorate until it just completely distorted the picture:confused: :mad:. However, the playback of previously recorded photos worked fine.

After searching around the web, I discovered that Sony and other manufacturers were repairing this problem completely free of charge to consumers (but it's still a hassle). This is a very widespread problem, as Sony makes CCD chips (the light sensor in a camera or camcorder) for many other manufacturers. Apparently, they used plastic chip carriers (packaging) in the manufacturing process, rather than the more robust ceramic carriers. Plastic packaging is common in consumer applications, whereas the ceramic packaging is more typical of MIL-spec parts and prototypes. The plastic parts are more susceptible to temperature and moisture.

If you have experienced this problem, the manufacturer will fix it for you. Check the link below for more info on your particular product.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/badccds.html

Hopefully, nobody else had a problem like this.