Hello Again,
Moderators, if I am in the wrong forum, please move.
I have a Kodak LS443 Digital Camera. I have had it about 5 years or so and am quite happy with it. Until now that is. It is doing something really strange, hopefully there is a fix as I really don’t want to spend the money for a new camera.
If you use it to take a photo outdoors during the day the only image I get is icredibly washed out, almost as if I was pointing the camera directly at the sun. The strange thing is if I use it to take a picture indoors or use it outdoors when it is overcast I get a perfect picture!? What is going on here? Is the image cell going bad in the camera? Does that happen over time?
The settingss are all on auto if that helps.
Thanks for the reply. I certianly wouldn’t consider paying to have it repaired. As you said, it would cost more than the camera is worth. However I am hoping it might be something simple that I am overlooking and one of the SD tech savvy people will have a suggestion.
I rarely use the automatic setting on my Kodak. I go almost completely manual. Set you camera to manual and observe what the setting are. And Kodak has a nice way of telling you ahead of time what the light reading is +or-. You should be able to see if something is set wrong outside. Change the various settings to zero out the exposure and take a picture. I’m betting the picture will be good. If not, then you have a hardware failure. If the picture is OK, then continue to use the manual setting. It’s really not that hard to set and adapt to conditions. They even have a manual that explains how all this works.
PS. I realize that it’s almost impossible to screw up the automatic setting so there may well be a failure. Still, if a workaround is possible this could be an opportunity to perfect your camera skills.
With the age and initial basic nature of that camera there is certainly no hope of doing an economical repair. Many cameras have a “return to factory settings” selection in the menus, that’s really your best bet. The only hope you have is that something got set to a weird value and this will reset it.
More likely, the sensor or the electronics are failing and you be forced to spend $100 on a new (much better) camera.
Wow, I had no idea my camera was NINE years old. Time goes by so fast. And to make the record clear, I am not cheap. I could go and buy a new camera, but would hate to. The one I have does a really good job and I have never been (until now of course) dissapointed by the picture quality of the camera.
A new camera might only be $100 or $200, but that is money I don’t have to spend if there is an easy fix. However, I will have to concide that most of you are right, the sensor and the hardware has probably reached it’s life limit. I just find it strange that it still works great indoors, even with a flash. Maybe I don’t understand how the sensors work, I just thought it strange that it works only in certian conditions.
A stuck aperture would explain your symptoms: it overexposes because the iris doesn’t close down to adjust for bright light. The sensor is probably fine.
This model resets to factory settings when you shut it off. I suspect the light sensor. Try setting the exposure compensation to -2 when shooting outdoors and see if that helps. If not, then keep it for an indoor backup.
Exposure is a function of how big a window you open, how long it stays open, and how ‘sticky’ the medium that the light lands on is. Usually it stays wide open to help with composition, and snaps down when you take the picture. If it works good in low light situations, where you would expect it to stay wide open, but not in bright light, where you would expect it to close down some, then either the window is not closing down when it’s told to, or the meter isn’t telling it to close down at all. I suppose you could take it apart and see if you can clean or free up the apeture, but I wouldn’t do that unless you’re prepared to wind up with nothing but a pile of parts.
It isn’t winding up with a pile of parts that bothers me. It’s when I get it back together and I have one part left over. You know, the part that looks unimportant, but you just know it is the lynchpin of the whole works.
Not to mention the look of no confidence the wife will give me as I start to unscrew the case and the “told you so” that is without a doubt following if I am unsuccesful.
There is a way you can test it. Go outside and take two photos: one zoomed all the way out (wide), one zoomed all the way in, but the same in all other respects. If only the first is overexposed then it means the aperture isn’t stopping down correctly.
Another possibility is that the camera became corrupted. My Kodak has gone crazy a couple of times and locked up. I took the batteries out and hit the power button and held it briefly a few times. This must have reset it so it works fine after. Anything is worth a try.
I am with Al Bundy on this. It may well be just a software issue, and it is well worth doing all you can to reset to factory default settings (even if you are not aware of having changed any), before taking more drastic and more expensive action.
My daughter’s cheapie Coolpix started doing something like this a couple of years ago (maybe not quite the same, it’s hard to tell). Anyway, I eventually figured out she had accidentally changed one of the special effects settings. I do not know your model, but most cameras these days come with a huge slew of possible settings, most of which most people are not aware of and never want to touch. Just because you did not mean to change any of them does not mean they did not get changed.
As mentioned above, this camera resets to factory defaults every time it is turned off so that’s not it. Taking the batteries out for 24 hours to let all the capacitors drain is your only remaining option, IMO. Opening up the camera to try to fix something simply isn’t going to work - these cameras aren’t designed to be repaired.
Thank for all the advice everyone. I will take the batteries out and let it sit overnight. Will post results tomorrow.
It is such a shame that nothing appears to be fixable any longer. Everything seems to be made disposable. I remember being a kid at my grandfathers house. He never threw anything away, and he always seemed to be able to repair anything that was broken. Perhaps his experience growing up in the 20’s taught him the value of making do with what you have.
Tried this. The Wide picture was totally over-exposed, just a bright white image. The full Zoom picture was mostly over-exposed, you could see the middle of the image, but the perimeter of the picture was whited out. Not sure what it means, but the zoom was definitely better, although unusable.
No luck with this approach. And I am unable to find any sort of reset button or option in the menu.
So, I am going now with approach number 3. The battery is out and I will wait until tomorow to replace it. Will post results. Might even try stare at it really hard and intimidate it into working correctly. :rolleyes:
