Vx1000 People are Yellow! Please Help!

[Jamie Pippin]

Alright so I have a Sony vx1000. I filmed my friends skateboarding yesterday and when I went home to review the footage, their skin and certain objects around them were bright yellow. The colors mainly concentrate on certain area's like skin. It baffles me.

The yellow flashes randomly occur.

What could be the problem? ccd fracture? main board fracture?

Is this repairable and how much will it cost me?

Screen Shot:
http://i288.photobucket.com/albums/l...pin/yellow.jpg

Footage: (focus on the skin and the wood against the fence in the first clip...and don't mind there being no audio)
YouTube - Broken Camera

[Bob Hart]

Until a better reply comes along, my guess is that the red channel is faulty. Chances are that yellow panel in the distant background should be brown or dull orange as well as the skin tones.

I can't speak for the VX1000 but the JVC fixed camera head of similar vintage behaved similarly when a channel dropped.

Fixable or not I can't say. "Affordably" fixable or not is a closer guess. A repair may cost more than the worth of the camera.

If the feed from the individual sensors on the CCD block is similar to the JVC, then it might be something as simple as a ribbon cable plug gone resistive or disconnected. On the other hand it could be failure of the sensor itself or any stage in the individual processing path from the sensor to the point where all colours are merged. Ribbon cable plugs are a possibility which can be easily checked. Beyond that, it is test instruments and technical skills.

In the case of the JVC, physical damage had been done to a small IC on a sub-board and JVC Professional Australia swapped it out for me under a warranty even though it was sold used (ex-demo).

With the VX1000, it is likely more components will have been permanently mounted on a single board which may rule out an easy repair if a component has failed.

Sony Professional can be good for parts support for older items. They were able to get me a missing part for a C74 microphone, so the VX1000 might be doable. Affordable is another matter.

[Marty Welk]

weird, it looks like everything that peaked over spec in white turned yellow. you can see it on the over spec white shoes also.
its hard to tell much, can you aim the camera at a buncha colored stuff and see what it looks like then?

ya know you really shouldnt let a camera go smacking into the sun like that, WAY back when older cameras slamming into the sun like that the tube would be destroyed, the new chip stuff is much more flexable in this area, but still depending on how much money you want to keep paying for stuff, you should avoid letting the sun blaze into the lens without having prepared for that.

[Jamie Pippin]

Thanks for the help guys. I think I might take the camera apart and check for cracks in the chips or boards.

And about aiming my camera towards the sun...give me a break. Of course it's never good to aim your lens directly at the sun, but think logically. It's going to happen.

[Jay Massengill]

Don't forget about accidently letting viewfinders (with magnifying lenses) point up toward the sun. That's much easier to go unnoticed because it will happen when you're not even thinking about it, like a slack time when the camera is unattended or just held at rest with the lens pointing down. It never happened to me, but I've known people who burned a spot in their viewfinder.
I almost did burn up a chip camera once, while taping a house fire from across the road. You could barely stand the radiant heat yourself and the camera image quickly went nuts (within 10 seconds). Fortunately it didn't seem to do any permanent damage (both the camera and my forehead survived).

Good luck with a fix for your camera!

[Bob Hart]

Jamie.


If it is a ribbon cable problem, chances are it will be at the junction where the cable goes into a socket and possibly just scunge on a conducting surface. Sometimes taking the cable out, wiping the faces clean and putting it back can be enough.

The end of the ribbon fits in a slot in a socket which is usually soldered onto a PCB.

The socket often consists of a body, probably black. On the front where the ribbon goes, very difficult to see will be a wedge retainer. This is a piece which is the width of the socket body and about 1.5mm deep from the front. This wedge retainer puts a locking pressure down onto the ribbon. To release it, often the left and right edges about 1.5mm in from the front can be prised towards the cable which will open up a gap of about 0.5mm between the retainer and the socket body. It does not come right off altogether. Once it has moved forward towards the ribbon, the ribbon itself will come free.

I find a pair of plastic surgical tweezers handy for holding the ribbon cable at minimal risk of damaging it. To put it back, you make sure the wedge retainer is fully out, about 1.5mm, slip the cable in through it and into the body of the socket, hold the ribbon in place whilst you push the wedge retainer back into place, which should lock the ribbon in the socket.

You likely know all this stuff already but doesn't hurt to repeat it.

If you are walking around on carpets in dry weather, perhaps use a ground strap on your wrist or touch a shield or metal part of the camera body before messing with internal circuit parts.