Digital Camera Troubleshooting - Hardware Issue?

[RadiatingLight]

I recently bought a used lumix point-and-shoot digital camera (DMC-FX07), because they're back in style now.

Works great in lower-light conditions, but when shooting bright stuff (e.g. outdoors), there's a horrible horizontal banding that takes place making the resulting photo unusable.

 

It's really weird, though, as the photo looks great in the viewfinder. Something about taking the photo itself messes up the camera.

 

I don't really know anything about digital cameras so if anyone has some intuition as to what this might be, please let me know.

 

I've attached a video of me taking the photo, and the resulting photo file.

[Thomas53]

The banding may be caused by the way the light is hitting the screen you're shooting through. Try holding the lens tight against the screen or go outside as doing either of these methods works for me.

[RadiatingLight]

18 minutes ago, Thomas53 said:

The banding may be caused by the way the light is hitting the screen you're shooting through. Try holding the lens tight against the screen or go outside as doing either of these methods works for me.

This was shot through a screen just because I'm in my room, but the banding happens in a variety of shooting conditions and locations. Definitely seems like some kind of hardware issue IMO but I just hope to know what exactly the issue is.

 

Here's another example photo from inside my car

 

 

 

[Kilrah]

You could try reseating the sensor flex if there is one, maybe a bad connection.

 

If it's only in bright light the shutter could possibly be stuck.

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, Kilrah said:

 

If it's only in bright light the shutter could possibly be stuck.

I am almost certain that this would be like other P&S cameras. They don't have a physical shutter, they just use a global shutter for capture.

[RadiatingLight]

36 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

I am almost certain that this would be like other P&S cameras. They don't have a physical shutter, they just use a global shutter for capture.

Do you know if it could be the variable-aperture that is stuck? I noticed it's making some repeated clicking noises sometimes (as if it's trying to close the aperture, and can't?)

[Blue4130]

1 minute ago, RadiatingLight said:

Do you know if it could be the variable-aperture that is stuck? I noticed it's making some repeated clicking noises sometimes (as if it's trying to close the aperture, and can't?)

It's possible, but if the aperture was stuck, I would expect the overexposure to be more consistent, not banding like what you have. 

[Kilrah]

6 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

I am almost certain that this would be like other P&S cameras. They don't have a physical shutter, they just use a global shutter for capture.

Quite the opposite, pretty much every stills camera not in a phone has a shutter, usually small leaf-style in the lens. If it has a controllable aperture that can be the same thing i.e. just closing it fully.

[Blue4130]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Quite the opposite, pretty much every stills camera not in a phone has a shutter, usually small leaf-style in the lens. If it has a controllable aperture that can be the same thing i.e. just closing it fully.

The aperture doesn't function as a shutter though. Not in the sense like a leaf shutter does. It is strictly for aperture control. Nearly every P&S uses global shutters to actually capture the picture.

 

Or have things changed?

[RadiatingLight]

13 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Quite the opposite, pretty much every stills camera not in a phone has a shutter, usually small leaf-style in the lens. If it has a controllable aperture that can be the same thing i.e. just closing it fully.

12 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

The aperture doesn't function as a shutter though. Not in the sense like a leaf shutter does. It is strictly for aperture control. Nearly every P&S uses global shutters to actually capture the picture.

 

Or have things changed?

 

I ended up disassembling the camera to try to fix any aperture/shutter issues -- It didn't work (the camera is still broken and it's probably unfixable by a layman), but I can confirm that it does have a physical shutter.

 

[Kilrah]

13 hours ago, Blue4130 said:

The aperture doesn't function as a shutter though. Not in the sense like a leaf shutter does. It is strictly for aperture control. Nearly every P&S uses global shutters to actually capture the picture.

 

Or have things changed?

No, to me it's the opposite, i've never seen one without a shutter. Electronic shutter has too many drawbacks until you go real high end, and even then there's usually still one that you can disable but with the penalty of rolling shutter slanting and extra image noise for CMOS/overspill for CCD.