The dreaded "pink thread"

[John DuMontelle]

I looked around...kind of quickly but...I thought I'd post this to see if others had this issue.

First off, my EX3 is in perfect shape but one of my best friends who freelances for two of the "big three" networks, as well as a lot of big name/money clients has now had this problem with two of his EX3 cameras.

He works his cameras a lot so this does not happen, apparently, with low use cameras as quickly.

One day he noticed a "pink thread" showing up in his footage. To shorten the story, after long hours of trying to figure it out himself, he bit the bullet and shipped his first EX3 off to be checked by Sony Pros. The diagnosis...the glue used to hold the prism in place inside the camera, after time, somehow comes loose. Or at least something happens with the glue to drop some kind of "glue thread" down where it can be picked up in the image.

He thought it was just a one time thing with his first camera. That was until this last weekend when it happened again with his second camera. This time he knew what the issue was, didn't waste time, and shipped the second cam off to be repaired.

So far repair cost is right around the two grand mark. Of course they do some general maintenance on the camera as well for this price but...it's still a two grand, more or less, repair.

I don't work my EX3 as much as my friend does yet I would never have known this issue could exist if he had not experienced it twice.

I was wondering if anyone else has had this issue?