Expert: John Oliverio - 11/29/2006

Question
Hi John,
 After leaving my Sony DSC-F717 overnight in a cool (down to 30 degrees?) car, it went kaflooey - a technical term which in this case means, when I try to take a picture, the image is barely disernable with the color all smeared vertically.  It's a bunch of colorful streaks running up and down.  The camera displays previously taken photos just fine, so the problem must be in the image capture function.
  My daughter-in-law has a different model Sony with the identical problem, so I might expect the problem is well known? I'm hoping you tell us "you have such n' such set wrong, you dumb elbow", but fear the 5 megapixel chip went South.
 These cameras are about 3 years old and took a home equity loan to purchase, so are they salvagable?

Answer
Hi Gene,

Sony has been experiencing problems and there has been a recall because of defective CCD's.  However, your camera is not listed as part of the recall.  You may want to try and get Sony and fix it anyway.  Hit sony's web-site for info.

John