My neighbor has a Samsung Digimax S500 stills camera.
Snowy photos were coming out overexposured and unclear.
I first suspected the camera was probably working OK, but the snow was confusing it.
With camera set on auto, picture indoors seemed OK but taking snowy picture outside were overexposed.
I could not find an auto exposure over-ride that could have been inadvertantly left on.
I loaded the images onto pc to check the fault was in recording the image and not the display.
With the large pc display it can be seen that the images (snowy or otherwise) have fine white horizontal lines across them - say 1 mm apart.
Similar problem detailed here - without resolution though:
http://forums.photographyreview.com/showthread.php?t=35887
I see above similar problem happened a cruise.
Last 'ok' picture taken by neighbor was kids in bath - so possibly high humidy/condensation could be cause of component failure.
The camera displays image on LCD OK when lining up to take photo - it's only the recorded images with the problem.
This link points to ccd problem:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7593_102-0.html?threadID=365981
Any ideas or suggestions?
I understand it is older than its 2 year g'tee.
Anyone know if its a known problem and of the type that m/f's still repair beyond the g'tee period? (Yes I'm an optimist ).
Hi Dave,
The camera could be stuck in an odd shooting mode, high ISO or the EXPOSURE COMPENSATION setting (pg28 manual) has been adjusted.
It is possible to easily restore the camera to DEFAULT SETTINGS.
From the SETUP menu (picture of spanner) select RESET and YES.
This will restore all default settings but time/date/language/video-out will not be affected.
It's on page 58 of the manual.
Hope this helps.
Gavin
Thanks Gavin.
Manual only goes up to p19 per language (and I did read it before posting ;) )
Yesterday I tried using the manual setting and using fast speeds - say 1/1000 at f2.8 to force under exposure, but no apparent affect.
p6 explains the +/- button, which I checked for iso 100, but couldn't locate exposure compensation.
The white balance, for what its worth is set to AWB, but colour tint doesn't seem t be a problem.
Today, I see by using PROG mode, the exp. compensation is available, but set to zero... then battery died.
New batteries..tried the reset, no confirmation 'reset' received and no delay in process, so can only assume it has done it. Time/date retained as you said.
Photo's still have the fine horizontal lines unfortunately.
So yes it helped - these possibilities needed to be eliminated, but it's still a poorly camera. (I was going to say 'sick', but Americans take that to mean cool).
Any other ideas?
I guess replacement camera is around £100, so not worth repairing by technician.
If problem keeps occurring I suggest you do a replacement. I am sure you have its warranty.
I expect the warranty will have expired given that the post is over 6 years old! Although I suppose he might have an extended warranty!