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October 11, 2005

Camcorder CCD Problems - More Manufacturers Post Advisories

By Richard Baguley
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I’ve posted a couple of times recently about how camcorder and camera manufacturers have admitted to a problem with some of their models where heat and moisture can damage the CCD image sensor. Now, several other manufacturers have posted notifications of a similar problem: Nikon, Konica-Minolta and FujiFilm have joined the list of manufacturers advising that this may be an issue for their products. So what’s the root cause of this?
 
The root cause looks to be one of the little secrets of the camcorder and digital camera industries: most manufacturers don’t make their own image sensors.
 
Although they don’t like to admit it, many manufacturers buy the sensors from another company, then build the camera or camcorder around them. And this seems to be where the problem lies. Although none of the affected companies have admitted to it, it seems that the common factor between the affected cameras and camcorders is that the CCD image sensor is manufactured by Sony.
 
The speculation in the industry is that this problem has only come to light now because the damage happens slowly over time: heat and moisture can gradually erode the packaging and glue used to hold the CCD sensor, and this is why the problem is only emerging now, although the products have been available for several years.
 
This problem is a serious one: a professional videographer told me that he is very concerned as he uses two camcorders that are on the affected list. He was concerned that one of his camcorders might develop the problem part way through a shoot, and that there’s no way to diagnose the problem before it starts affecting the video quality.  
 
I’ll be reporting more on this story more as the facts emerge. There’s also an interesting overview (although again there are very few real facts) at Imaging Resource.
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