In the last few weeks, digital camera makers Sony, Konica Minolta, Nikon (Europe and Japan), Olympus (Japanese only), Canon, Fujifilm, and Ricoh have all issued service advisories covering several of their camera models, citing the cameras’ sudden failure to record images, or to snap distorted pictures or images with a strong purple cast. The failures effectively render the cameras useless. In classic “stealth recall” move, most companies are typically offering to repair the defective cameras free of charge regardless of warranty status, but are coy about admitting to the problem, presumably because the extent of the failures may show the company or their products in a bad light.
The problem, currently being reported by the Wall Street Journal (registration required) but originally reported and developed by the digital imaging Web site The Imaging Resource, seems to stem from selected CCD image sensors manufactured by Sony between October 2002 and March 2004, which could have been used in cameras available for retail sale as late as mid-2005, and are currently available on the used camera market. Certain camera lines (listed below) have been specifically mentioned in customer advisories, but a number of cameras manufactured during the same date range are completely unaffected and not subject to this failure.
Sony is one of the few companies which manufactured CCDs on a large scale, and its parts are used in cameras and devices from a variety of other manufacturers. Sony itself used the parts in CLI
