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Ready to send my Z750 back :-(

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Kent Christensen

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Hi

To make af long story short.....

A few years ago I was very active in the Canon-forum. I was going to buy a nice camera, and so I did - the Canon Powershot G3. But nowadays I also need a camera to bring along, a very compact one which isstill able to take great pictures.

After having read many reviews I began to look closer at the Casio EX-Z750. Besides, I read many of the threads in this forum about that little germ - and I saw your nice pictures. So I got one :-) . Received it this saturday - and what a fantastic camera. I love it!! It is THE camera for me - no doubt about it....... BUT, cause there is a very big "BUT"..........

Yesterday Ii shot a picture which had horizontal lines in the upper right corner/side of the picture :-( . It looked very strange. I searched in this forum for threads about the problem, and I am affraid, I found a lot!!

Please have a view at the picture:



And here is a crop:



Thinking of returning the camera and buy a Canon SD500 or SD550 - but I really don't want to. I enjoy using this nice little camera - but if I can't trust it, well - I won't keep it.

At this time I have shot about 100 pictures with the camera, and this is the ONLY picture which have these horizontal lines.... I'll do more test-shots as soon as I can.

My English is not perfect, I know :-) . I come from Denmark, so please forgive me ;-) .

Comments please........ :-)
 
One more thing - my camera has the new colour "Antrazit", and it has firmware 1.01.

Besides, it is made in China.

Kent.
 
Okay. I know you shoot many pictures, so that you have only experienced this problem twice calms me down a little :-) .

But I do know, by reading the threads in this forum, that the problem with horizontal lines is rather common with the Z750. But if it doesn't happen often, then..... well, perhaps I can accept it.

One of these days I will shoot at lot of pictures outside, and if I can't reproduce the lines, maybe I will keep the camera.

I am a little put off by this.... But no camera is perfect.

Kent.
 
http://i.pbase.com/v3/56/525156/1/50050489.contrailbug.jpg

and I had to touch up the sky around the flying bug. I know I deleted some others with the lines. My UZI (Oly C-2100) had that happen often in really low light shots... you could see it after applying levels. I think in the Z750 it may have to do with some sort of reflection of the CCD when the light is bright, or perhaps it indictates some slight movement of the camera. Anyway, I don't think it's much of a concern IF it is a very rare occurance.
Sue
--



http://www.pbase.com/artshot
http://www.beatricedesignsinc.com
 
Thank you for your answers :-) .

I will soon try to make sure, that is only a rare problem with my camera.

If you record a movie with the focus set to AF, can you hear the AF-motor when you play the movie afterwards? It is VERY loud and clear to me, so I use PF instead.

Kent.
 
in a series of 3 to 4 pictures, but never - random? - since applying firmware 1.01.18.00.

FYI, there exists (existed?) also a version 1.01.17.00.

I've also got the Chinese model.

sensor
 
Mine does this too. It happens when the sun shines towards the lens at a certain angle. I think it's a type of lens flare (those circles that you see when shooting into the sun) that's reflecting off of something in the camera. If you didn't have the lines, then you'd have lens flare.

Bart
 
According to the manual, if you take a picture of a brightly lit subject, vertical or horizontal lines will appear on your picture. Maybe a little experimentation will confirm this.
 
At that time I dl'ed ftp.casio.co.jp/pub/qv/download/en/EX-Z750_101.exe.

After finding the link again now I accidentally clicked it and downloaded the firmware again?

No, there is a version 1.0.1.20.00 from date/time 05.09.09.17.09 !

Howto:

unzip the file and extract EX-Z750.BIN. Look into this binary file using a hex viewer. The first 1.200 characters contain the strings described above.

Hmm, next try?

Apart from this:
What about artefacts which result from the compression process?

sensor
 
No - the manual says, that vertical lines will only appear on the MONITOR, and not on the recorded image.

But as mentioned earlier, the vertical lines may just appear instead of lense flares.....

Kent.
 
GREAT :-)

I have just updated the firmware :-)

But what is this, Casio??? When you look at the support-site, the update 1.01 is dated Jul. 2005, but when you download it, the update is from september, as you said. Why make it a secret that their is a new update?? Very odd - and very bad customer-service!!!!

No, the vertical lines has nothing to do with JPEG-compression.

Kent.
 
Hope my congratulations are justified ;-)

I can't understand this secretiveness, too.
Maybe there are complexes if something had to be fixed ...

Most of the people reported good experiences with new Z750 firmware releases.

Good luck.

sensor
 
For my part, there are a number of improvements that could be made with firmware updates (at least in principle) AND no change in documentation. They are:

-ISO information in the EXIF
-Better Bayer-interpolation algorithm (yeah, right!)
-Improved JPEG configuration
-Improved auto-exposure behavior

Also, the Z750 sometimes locks up when I'm moving files to my PC. Maybe they fixed that. I'll be giving it a try.

And then there's the obvious advantage of having a larger number. :-)

Remember the movie "Spinal Tap". That's guy's amplifier was better because the volume control went to 11 instead of 10. It was 1 better.

Bart
 
Bart, why should any of your important points - I can't evaluate each one
of them - not be commented?

Take a look at any of these detailed changelogs in case of open source, freeware etc.

Please, what is your understanding of not to describe changes in - at least - short statements?

sensor
 
You shot this picture through a window glass? Any chance the window has a polarizing film to avoid ultraviolet damage to the furnitures inside the room? Do you have any shots without a glass between the camera and the subject?
 
sensor said:
Bart, why should any of your important points - I can't evaluate
each one
of them - not be commented?
Click to expand...
I thought they were somewhat descriptive. These problems have been mentioned multiple times before in detail (and I was trying to be brief), so it felt a bit redundant to me, but of course not to everybody as you correctly pointed out--my mistake. Since you asked, I'll be glad to explain the problems in a bit more detail:

-ISO in the EXIF. The z750 currently keeps the ISO information in the maker notes which is pretty non-standard and most programs don't see those and inadvertenly erase them (for example, lossless jpeg rotation in windows xp destroys the maker notes and the iso information along with it.) If Casio would simply put the ISO information in a standard location in the EXIF data, this wouldn't be a problem and all graphics programs (eg., Picasa, Photoshop, Irfanview, etc...) could read it.

-Bayer interp. I've been suspicious that the slight edge artifacts in z750 images are due to the bayer interpolation algorithm. If that's the case (I don't know that it is) then it would be nice if they could refine it.

-JPEG config. Casio attempts to make the file size constant. I'd rather they make the quality level constant and let the file size increase or decrease along with photo detail.

-Auto-exposure. The z750 has a strong tendency to over-expose by 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop. I wished they'd tweak the auto-exposure program to fix this problem.
sensor said:
Take a look at any of these detailed changelogs in case of open
source, freeware etc.
Click to expand...
It's not quite the same since these guys only have to type it once. I'm not organized enough to keep a log of my issues with the camera. I was really just trying to make a counter-point as to why one might want to upgrade--ie., there's always things that can be improved.

As a point of reference, there were some very significant changes in v1.01 of the firmware:

-The notorious whining sound in the video was eliminated
-The default saturation was turned down
-Focus accuracy was improved (in my camera).

Some people reported other improvements. So there's a history of undocumented improvements in Casio firmware upgrades.

Bart
 
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