Vertical Line across My Pictures - Sony DSC H9
April 2, 2008 | Filed Under Cameras and Equipment, General
For the last few weeks I have had a problem with my camera, whats the problem you ask? - a nasty looking virtical line across pictures taken at night or with a dark background. I first noticed the problem in late February when I attended and snapped some shots at the 2008 Reggae film Festival and again the same night when there was a beautiful lunar eclipse.

see that ugly line to the lower right of the picture?
I am not to sure what caused or is causing the line but I hate it it! Daytime pictures or pictures with sufficient lighting aren’t affected by this feint (but ugly) line and I have learnt the hard way how fragile photography equipment can be. I am in two minds whether to send back the camera to Sony as it is still under warranty, I have printed up the necessary service documents through their website and all that is needed now is for me to send it off to them, but I am weighting the costs plus time without my camera plus what if the decide it’s not a manufacturers problem. All that has been on my mind lately so I just thought I blurt it out here. Whether I decide to send it or not I am bound to blog about it here.

The line is seen more clearly in this photo.
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6 Responses to “Vertical Line across My Pictures - Sony DSC H9”
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your camera sensor might be dying otherwise, nice snapshots of your daily life.
It looks like you could have dead pixels, it’s something you wouldn’t normally expect from a new camera, but happens as digital cameras get old. At that time, the problem would be randomly scattered over the image. It looks like a fault in manufacture. I’d certainly send it back.
it’s so expensive to send my camera back and with the long wait I don’t even know if it is worth it. Still undecided
I am experiemcing the EXACT same thing, and I think it’s even in the exact same place - about 3/4 (from thr left) of the way across the image.
To me it appears to be a single line of pixels in the sensor. When you magnify the images way up, you can tell.
At any rate, I don’t think it’s dead pixels, or even a dying sensor. I have had this camera for about 10 months (got it right when it came out), and it has been doing it for a long time. Had I noticed it right away, I would have just exchanged it at the store, but the problem is so sporadic - usually only at night, sometimes very dark photos…and not even all the time then. It seems to be more prevalent when using some of the manual/specialized exposure/scene modes…I have not really seen it when using the automatic (green camera icon) mode.
It is quite frustrating, and has ruined several nice shots, but I agree, the notion of sending off my camera for weeks, is not appealing either.
I was hoping to find some sort of firmware update or solution on the internet, to no avail. Perhaps if we could find many more people with this same problem, Sony could issue some sort of recall/quick exchange.
And for the record, I have tried calling Sony customer support twice regarding this issue, and they were of no help at all - I’m not even sure they understood what I was describing.
If anyone has any suggestions (other than sending it back), I would love to hear them.
Thanks,
John
you problem does sound exactly like mine. I can’t really understand it because there are days when the line is not present at all.