Poll: How Many Of You Have Flickering EVFs

I'm beginning to get bored by this.
The D7 is a great camera and it takes great pictures
and I wouldn't want to be without one but ...

imaging if:

(a) your first D7 bought by mail order had what you thought
was a defect, so you sent it back

The defect is that under relatively low light a half-press on the shutter speed causes the eye-level viewfinder to flicker. LCD is unaffected,
does it on all settings, batteries and main supply. Picture quality
is superb but the flicker is very irritating!!

(b) your mail order company let you down with promises of a replacement
so you get a refund and purchase one from a local store at a higher price

(c) You find that your new one has the same fault as the original!

(d) Your local store swaps it for another. Guess what?

(e) Your local store orders another from Minolta. Guess what?

(f) Your local store admits to putting these 'faulty' cameras back on the shelf!

(g) You send email to the officially advertised Minolta European support line
and they say 'contact Minolta UK'

(h) You e-mail 'Minolta UK' explaining the above at length

(i) You don't get a reply so you phone them up and get 'oh you are
the one that keeps sending me long emails, we dont know what to
do with you, you obviously will never be satisfied'. I replied that I just
wanted a camera that worked properly. They say they will investigate
and get back to me.

(j) I get no reply so I mail again, this time I get a reply from their
'customer service dept' saying they will contact
Japan and I will hear from them again when they have heard back.

(k) 2 weeks later, no reply so I mail the customer service dept for news.
Still waiting...

(l) The morning after using my D7 with the official Minolta AC adaptor for downloading files to my PC, my D7 is dead. Stone cold.

(m) This time I mail it back to Minolta UK 'repair' dept explaining my ongoing problems and asking them if they can fix the new fault and check for EVF flicker before despatching new or repaied unit

4 days later I get the camera back (OK, lots of points for turnaround
speed) and it is now alive but guess what - still the EVF flicker.

Now, I'm tempted to just sent it straight back but after all this I
am beginning to wonder if it is just me. I mean, do all D7s do this?
Is it actually a feature rather than a fault? I doubt it because my friend's
D7 does not do it!!

So, how many of you have D7s that show this EVF flicker?

The problem is that there is no other equivalent camera on the market.
If there were I would have changed makes by now. But the D7 is unique

and has lots of super features and takes great photos, so am I just being picky? I can put up with it forn the sake of keepiong the D7 but should
I really have to?

Lee

... under low light condition (not too low, indoors with bulbs on), but I cannot reproduce it every time I want.

That happened with full Batteries (NiMH) too. I think it was in b/w light amplification mode. My firmware is 121e.

Because I use most time the LCD and not EVF it does not concern me too much. But I'll watch out now.

BTW when taking night shots the EVF is MUCH to bright for my eye even in its lowest brightness setup. My eye is blinded for some seconds when I looked tru the EVF and then looking to the scene... (why can't it dim automatically if the metering recognize VERY low light condition?)

Can you reproduce the flickering everytime you want? Conditions?

--best regardsTom

Hi Tom

[B] TOM said:

... under low light condition (not too low, indoors with bulbs on),

Click to expand...

Same with me but also on 'dull' days, eg the other day I was in the church taking some photos and I got it then occasionally too.

*TOM* said:

Can you reproduce the flickering everytime you want? Conditions?

Click to expand...

Pretty much. At home in the evening with normal domestic lighting or without lighting when it is dark. I would say it does it 95% of the time. Occasionally if I depress the shutter halfway I get the flicker and then if I immediately let go and press again no flicker but, as I say,
mostly I have it.

To be honest I wonder if I am cutting off my own nose to spite my face here as I mostly take outdoor shots anyway and no doubt when the summer comes the problem will go away but
it is irritating, also Minolta's approach. Ho hum.
Lee[/B]

Lee Davis said:

(l) The morning after using my D7 with the official Minolta AC adaptor for downloading files to my PC, my D7 is dead. Stone cold.

Click to expand...

Just FYI, there appears to be a way to get the camrea to appear to lock up during USB transfer (similar to the problem with the Nikon 990). It may be related to unplugging the camera before it is really "finished", but I din't know. You have to take the batteries out for a while to clear this.

As for the EVF, mine does not flicker, well, I don't think that it does. However, it will do the following...

• In low light, sometimes it changes brightness abruptly before settling down. It appears to be changing gain settings.

• I have had the EVF sort of flash in low light in B&W mode. On my camera, it seemed to correlate with the flash still charging, so I though that it was a warning that the flash was not charged yet. I can only reproduce it with low or crummy batteries., with good batteries the flash charges so quickly that I can't tell if it is flashing or just changing brightness levels as it picks a gain.

Bryan

Next time the EVF on your D7 flickers, try switching to manual focus. I believe the flickering will stop. On my D7, the flickering occurs when the lens is wide open (low light) & the camera cannot focus or find a suitable shutter speed that will result in a useable image.

LSDavis said:

[B] TOM said:

... under low light condition (not too low, indoors with bulbs on),

Click to expand...

Same with me but also on 'dull' days, eg the other day I was in the
church taking some photos and I got it then occasionally too.

Lee Davis said:

Can you reproduce the flickering everytime you want? Conditions?

Click to expand...

Pretty much. At home in the evening with normal domestic lighting
or without lighting when it is dark. I would say it does it 95% of
the time. Occasionally if I depress the shutter halfway I get the
flicker and then if I immediately let go and press again no flicker
but, as I say,
mostly I have it.

To be honest I wonder if I am cutting off my own nose to spite my
face here as I mostly take outdoor shots anyway and no doubt when
the summer comes the problem will go away but
it is irritating, also Minolta's approach. Ho hum.
Lee

Click to expand...

--Brice[/B]

Yes, mine(since 4 weeks) flashes as well( 1 to 4 times per second). But only in low light situations. None of the described bypasses work for me:
MF, internal flash, batteries.

Jan
(but I can live with the problem)

Bryan Biggers said:

Bryan Biggers said:

(l) The morning after using my D7 with the official Minolta AC adaptor for downloading files to my PC, my D7 is dead. Stone cold.

Click to expand...

Just FYI, there appears to be a way to get the camrea to appear to
lock up during USB transfer (similar to the problem with the Nikon
990). It may be related to unplugging the camera before it is
really "finished", but I din't know. You have to take the batteries
out for a while to clear this.

As for the EVF, mine does not flicker, well, I don't think that it
does. However, it will do the following...

• In low light, sometimes it changes brightness abruptly before

settling down. It appears to be changing gain settings.

• I have had the EVF sort of flash in low light in B&W mode. On my

camera, it seemed to correlate with the flash still charging, so I
though that it was a warning that the flash was not charged yet. I
can only reproduce it with low or crummy batteries., with good
batteries the flash charges so quickly that I can't tell if it is
flashing or just changing brightness levels as it picks a gain.

Bryan

Click to expand...

Davis,

we had 'spoken' a long time ago by several e-mails if you remember and I am really sorry your problem has not been resolved yet.

As I have said before, I had the flickering problem with my very first D7, which also came with a whole bunch of other problems. The camera I own now has never shown any flickering EVF problems at all and I mostly use the EVF.

I remember the problem was really irritating for me back then. Lucky me, the new camera does not seem to have ever 'heard' of it. For some reason, it seems my camera is better than many out there, as I do not have any of the repeatedly mentioned problems, like the AC plug cover and diopter popping out all the time. (But I guess I should keep quite just in case. You never know what may turn up!) ;-)--Pablettowww.pbase.com/pabletto(samples taken with the MINOLTA DiMAGE 7)Last update 21 February 2002 (3 new galleries added)