Lines in JPGs for cheap digital P&S

[Frank Petronio]

My seven-year old's cheap Insigna point & shoot digital went from behaving nicely to making nothing but blown out jpgs with horizontal lines running through everything. It sat around for a few months, no other damage. I've reset everything, replaced batteries, all the common sense things. Even tried different battery settings (Alkaline vs Lithium) and tried older batteries in case fresh ones were weird.

Toast or might there be a wack-hack to do?

 

[divewizard]

Open it up and check a broken solder connection or a loose or corroded internal connector. Beyond that there is nothing you can do. If anything went wrong with one of the chips it has become ewaste.

At this point you have nothing to loose taking it apart. So go for it.

If you see a loose solder connection you can reflow it. Or if you have the some solder wick, suck up the old solder and add some fresh.

For flaky connections I sometimes try minute amounts of Caig DeoxIt. One bottle should last you a lifetime.

 

[tokengirl]

This kind of sounds like a problem with either the memory card, the card reader (if you are using a stand alone one), or the cable you are using to transfer the images. Have you tried testing these things?

 

[ChrisN]

Frank - does the display replay an good image OK? Several years ago there was a major recall after a large number of cameras with a particular sensor made by Sony went bad. These include cameras by other makers that used a Sony sensor. The cameras capture distorted images, and live view shows the same, but the LCD display will show the menus OK, and will replay previously-captured good images OK. See http://www.imaging-resource.com/badccds.html

The sensor in my Sony F717 went bad and was replaced several years out of warranty. Sony was still paying for sensor replacements in these cameras as recently as Feb '10 when a friend of mine had a 5-year old Canon repaired for free. Might be worth checking.

 

[Justin Smith]

Re: Cold Solder Joints

Re: Cold Solder Joints

Okay, I know this sounds crazy but it did work for me. The ethernet card in my company's main HP printer was acting up. A few internet searches revealed a method of resurrection in "baking" the card: preheat an oven to 350 degrees F, place the card on a baking sheet (with each end propped on something to avoid actual contact with card & baking sheet), bake the card for exactly 8 minutes, then allow it to cool at room temperature for 30 minutes.

I did this and the card has worked fine for the last 1 or 2 months. The reasoning provided was that cold solder joints start showing up with age and the bake cures them (BTW, no visible solder breaks could be seen). So, if you can strip the camera down to the circuit board, with no plastic parts attached, this might be worth a shot.