new CCD failures?

Seems like Panasonic Japan announced free repairments for known defects in a series of DMC-LC1 (L1 predecessor) CCDs.

The announcement is here: http://panasonic.jp/support/dsc/faq/ccd/index.html

Translation tools don't to a very good job from japanese, but german-to-english works much better:

http://www.digitalkamera.de/ ... ...h_auf_Panasonic_Lumix_DMC-LC1_aus_3632.asp

No details about what will happen in the rest of the world (several people from different places report similar failures), no official announcements from Panasonic as far as I know.

For more details, several threads are opened around the issue in Leica user forums:

http://www.leica-camera-user.com/ ... ... 11431-d2-lc1-failures.html
http://www.leica-camera-user.com/ ... ... 11149-lc1-recall-repair.html
http://www.leica-camera-user.com/ ... ... 10463-digilux-2-repair-solms.html

People is trying to do some inventory of currently known failures.

Don't know why the links were banned.
They are ok in the news forum!

Julio - you've probably found mention of the same problem that Leica are now grudgingly admitting on the Digilux 2.

Who made the sensors in that camera and the DMC-LC1 ? I thought they were Panasonics, but now I'm not so sure - this sounds like the Sony issue all over again!

Anyway, here's a link to what Leica ae offering owners of their cameras!

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1038&message=21326746

--
Peter - on the green island of Ischia
http://www.pbase.com/isolaverde

(Rough) Translation:

Thank you for using Panasonic products.

We have become aware of a rare problem occuring in the DMC-LC1 camera where the image is not displayed or is garbled.

The fault is the result of variations in the manufacturing process of the CCD sensor, combined with the operating environment. [trans. note: i.e. some sensors were not sealed as well as they should have been, and will degrade under long exposure to hot+humid conditions.]

We will repair defective units free of charge. Please contact us if your camera has developed this problem.

toll free (Japan only) ０１２０-８７８－９９３ (9am-6pm)