# Digital Camera Problem
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 6, 2009, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488 "2009-03-06T04:53:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/21 "2009-03-06T17:23:44Z")
> [@Anonymous\_Coward](#):
>
> Personally I’m thinking about replacing my failing S2 IS with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ28. It has an 18x optical zoom and can take high def (720p) movies.
Buying a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 a few years ago was one of the best decisions I ever made. It’s way out of date by current standards, but it has absolutely done all I could reasonably ask of it. The Leica lens is outstanding. Love the f2.8 aperture (though not when the 10x zoom is fully racked out, of course, but that’s usually when I’m shooting sports-type stuff in bright sunlight). My only complaint has been that it doesn’t have any mechanism for manual focus, so you have to be pretty careful when shooting at any distance with other objects closer in the foreground to ensure that the autofocus doesn’t pick up the wrong thing, but otherwise I’ve loved it (and I believe the newer FZXX models have manual focus, as well as enhanced autofocus functionality). Oh, a hot shoe would have been great also, but I’ve been able to make do with a slave flash unit reasonably well.
I like it so much that I’ve actually been tempted to make the Lumix G1 my entry into the full DSLR realm, despite the relative dearth of Micro Four-Thirds lenses available. Sounds like they got most things right on that one as well.
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### Author:  [@Anonymous\_Coward](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anonymous_Coward)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/22 "2009-03-06T17:36:13Z")
After looking in my wallet and due to approx $5k in home repairs this week I actually just went out and bought a Kodak Z1012 IS for half the price of the Panasonic FZ28. I really wanted the FZ28 but couldn’t justify the price at the moment.
[DVD Talk Forum](http://www.steves-digicams.com/2008_reviews/kodak_z1012is.html) rates the 1012 pretty well so I hope it’ll work well as a “budget” super zoom.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/23 "2009-03-06T17:36:22Z")
> [@Frylock](#):
>
> To rephrase from my OP: The black and white pictures at the link I gave were taken on Auto, and the blue pictures were taken with altered aperture settings.
Put it this way, the only photos that really concern me there are the first two. The others look fine, just a white balance screw up. The first two look weird, but it says they’ve been edited, so I don’t know what’s been done to them. There should definitely not be that much noise at 100 or 64 ISO. But the ones that I assume are unedited look fine in the shadows and overall. Just mismatched white balance.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/24 "2009-03-06T17:55:55Z")
One more thing I noticed in the manual (sorry about the slew of posts). You can always try going to the Set Up menu and selecting Reset to reset all of the factory defaults, as **beowulff** suggests.
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### Author:  [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/25 "2009-03-06T18:16:44Z")
> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> If picture 2009 march walk023.JPG is straight out-of-camera, my bet is either user error is to blame or the auto white balance has gotten screwy. Auto white balance error is a real possibility, as the pictures taken with flash don’t show the blue, according to the OP, and the camera would know to set the white balance to around 5500K when the flash is being activated–I don’t think it makes any “smart” decisions (analyzing color data in the picture) in the case of flash. In this case, the workaround is setting the white balance yourself.
It was a “whoah” of astonishment at your skills, not a “whoah” of “look what happened to my camera!”
As in, I understood as much of what you were saying as I do when Data and Geordie are discussing matter-antimatter reactions on _Star Trek: TNG_.
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### Author:  [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/26 "2009-03-06T22:11:10Z")
> [@pulykamell](#):
>
> One more thing I noticed in the manual (sorry about the slew of posts). You can always try going to the Set Up menu and selecting Reset to reset all of the factory defaults, as **beowulff** suggests.
Geez, it seems it may have been as simple as that.
The thing seems to be working okay so far. It’s a little cloudy today, though, so we’ll see how it does in full sunlight.
If it turns out I just needed to reset the thing, I’ll be a might embarrassed. 😉
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/27 "2009-03-06T22:19:36Z")
> [@Frylock](#):
>
> Geez, it seems it may have been as simple as that.
>
> The thing seems to be working okay so far. It’s a little cloudy today, though, so we’ll see how it does in full sunlight.
>
> If it turns out I just needed to reset the thing, I’ll be a might embarrassed. 😉
It’s not that unusual. Whenever my dad’s camera goes weird, it’s because he’s bumped the white balance, the exposure comp, the ISO, something.
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### Author:  [@The\_Surb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Surb)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/28 "2009-03-06T22:30:45Z")
Anyone else as amazed as I am? Can you diagnose my 35mm over the internet too?
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### Author:  [@Chum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chum)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/29 "2009-03-06T23:19:46Z")
> [@Anonymous\_Coward](#):
>
> Mine is doing somewhat the same thing. I have a Canon S2 IS and it’s getting the “black screen of death” where the mechanical iris in the lens gets stuck shut and when I do get the camera to work the preview and flashless shots get darker and darker after each shot until after 4-5 shots I need to reset the camera and the cycle repeats.
>
> This is a dead camera, which is a shame as otherwise it was a dandy camera. Fie on Canon for not recalling the S2 as there’s hundreds of complaints on the net of this same problem.
I have the exact same camera with the same problem. Mine has lasted much longer than 5 shots after I did a reset, but now the photos have faint horizontal lines through them. I really thought the thing would last me more than two years.
I, too, am amazed by pulykamell’s skills. Better to be embarrassed than to throw out a perfectly good camera.
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### Author:  [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2009, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/digital-camera-problem/488488/30 "2009-03-06T23:45:01Z")
> [@Chum](#):
>
> I have the exact same camera with the same problem. Mine has lasted much longer than 5 shots after I did a reset, but now the photos have faint horizontal lines through them. I really thought the thing would last me more than two years.
>
> I, too, am amazed by pulykamell’s skills. Better to be embarrassed than to throw out a perfectly good camera.
To be fair, **beowolff** did mention the reset first. I did forget that easy solution, which is much easier to describe over the internet than to go through all the menus, making sure no settings are mis-set.
Horizontal lines on an image usually indicate a sensor problem of some sort. I’ve seen people suggest trying a new memory card, just in case, but my bet is a serious sensor issue (or the connections to the sensor).
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