Hello,

When filming with my Elura 100 I often see what look like vertical lines of light. I have had this problem both indoors and out. It seems to happen when there is a bright source of light in view.

How do I avoid these? Would a filter help?

Thanks, Bill

It is probably smear or vertical smear. It's undesirable artifact of CCD chips generally called vertical smear. It varies with CCD imagers and faster shutter speeds tend to make it worse.

Smearing is a problem with all CCD's and I really don't know which camcorders have worse problems but it does come up here and other places every so often. I am sure Sony (and other companies) have attempted to reduce the problem, but everything is a compromise. Too bad consumer camcorders do not provide the "Smear Rejection Ratio" in their specs like the "Mintron Jaguar camera" http://www.mintron.com/HTM/News/HTM/53W0.htm which has a photo comparison (also of dynamic range).

Q: What is smear rejection ratio what's is the physical meaning of it . how do you measure it.
http://www.mintron.com/HTM/Q&A/Htm/...measurement.htm

Digital8 Still picture resolution
(Sample Photo of CCD Smear)
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/t115139.html

Example of smear taken with Sony HC1
http://www.dvinfo.net/gallery/showimage.php?i=661&c=46

Article 88: Vertical bleeding or smearing from a saturated portion of an image. (A technical explanation) Sample is not that great.
http://www.ptgrey.com/support/kb/index.asp?a=4&q=88&ST=

Is that what you are experiencing? There is no filter for it, just don't point at bright points of light. That is one advantage of CMOS cameras, they don't have smear. (But they may have other problems.)



Rich

__________________
FireWire Survey

Elura 100 does not have CCD, it uses CMOS which supposedly should not have smear problem. At least this is what Sony was advertising when it switched from CCD to CMOS in its cameras. But I noticed similar defect several times myself, sometimes the image sort of split in half, one part is brighter, another is darker. It does not look like the streak from a headlight.

The lines cant be helped. Always make sure that the sun or bright light is at your back, not in front and you wont have this problem.

__________________
Rest in Peace Rick Wright. We'll all see you On The Dark Side of The Moon............

You raise the blade,
You make the change,
You rearrange me till I'm
Sane.
You lock the door, throw away
the key, there's someone in my
head and it's not me.......

The Canon Elura 100 uses a CCD imager so it can have vertical smearing.



Rich

__________________
FireWire Survey

[QUOTE=poncho]The Canon Elura 100 uses a CCD imager so it can have vertical smearing.[QUOTE]
Oops, I did it again. http://www.usa.canon.com/app/pdf/dv...o__Dec15_05.pdf --> "1/5-inch CCD". Shoulda shut up

Once again, thanks for the quick and knowledgeable answers.

This forum is a great resource for folks like me just getting started.

Bill