Distortion in S45 pictures?

[PeterS45]

Hi,

I received a message from Poland about a possible problem with the S45 when the sun appears in the picture. There's a strange electronic distortion on one edge on the pictures. Please take a look at http://home.planet.nl/~bout0140/Pics and let me know what you think.

Peter

[piper]

I'm new to digital photography, but have taken over 1000 pics in the last three weeks with my new S45.

Actually I'm quite surprised the sun pictures come out as good as they do. Do other digital cameras not have the bar or other distortions when the sun is in the shot?

My own inclinatation would be to not have the sun in the picture out of fear of damaging the CCD.

There is really no damage from the sun shots?

[Guillermo Freige]

The pictures were taken in JPEG or in RAW mode?
The flaw is very similar to the green banding present in some S50 RAW pictures converted with a tweaked version of the Camera RAW using the S45 profile. Of course this is a flaw of the Camera RAW for using the "wrong" profile, but I think some similar can happen if the picture is taken in RAW and converted and the software has some bugs in it.
If the picture was shooted in RAW, please try to convert it with other program (Camera RAW or the trial version of Breeze Browser) and see what happend.
I will make some tests tomorrow with my S50 to check if the flaw is present in this model too.

[PeterS45]

Guillermo,

in my case the pictures were taken in the highest resolution jpeg mode, and it happened only once. But as you can see in Jarek's pictures (follow the link from my Powershot page) he has quite a few pictures with the band on it.

[Guillermo Freige]

Peter:
I've tried to reproduce the same flaw in the S50 without
success. I'm now asking to other S50 owners to try the same.
I've tried in RAW and JPEG, in P, Tv, Av and M modes, and JPEG in AUTO mode. All the tests were made at ISO 50 (it would be useless to use higher ISO settings in a "sun" picture).
This is strange, because both cameras are exactly the
same beyond a 4MP vs a 5MP sensor. So, I see 2 possibles scenarios here:
1.- The problem is the CCD itself
2.- The S50 firmware is newer than the S45 one, so probably it has some bugs corrected. If this is the case, a firmware upgrade probably will solve the S45 flaw. Please check it with Canon.

[Guillermo Freige]

Hi.
Please be aware of the March 18 S45 firmware upgrade, available for download in Canon site.
The new firmware is version 1.0.2. There is no mention
to the "sun" flaw, but if your camera has a older firmware, to test the new one seems a good idea.
The new firmware release date is very close to the S50 launch, so probably some code patched for the S50 was ported to the S45 in this firmware.

The link is:

http://web.canon.jp/Imaging/PSS45/PSS45_Firmware-e.html

[Guillermo Freige]

Peter:
I've been browsing your pictures, and you already have the 1.0.2 firmware installed. Sorry.

[PeterS45]

Guillermo,

Thanks for you trouble.
I only managed to reproduce the flaw once, so I don't really think its a problem. Why should anybode take pictures of the sun? But I'm waiting for my Polish friend to get a reaction from Canon and then post it in this forum.

Regards,

[Guillermo Freige]

Peter:
I'm one of the people who takes pictures with the sun in it :).
I like contrasted pictures, and I like water reflections, and I like the "orange sun"present at sunsets, or the sun showing betwen the trees, so I ended with the sun in the frame in various shots.
Of course it's not for the faint of heart. If you use film, you need to use proffesional films (like Kodak Supra) and you need to burn&dodge the print during wet lab developing, or you need a good scanner (36 or 48 bits) and make the same in Photoshop (I'd done both), to tame the huge difference between the sun and the rest of the picture, but I really like the results.
So, why don't do the same in digital? It's a shame you can't obtain the same results with digicams, because the CCD latitude isn't as big as the film one, but in some controlled situations, or doing double taking with a couple of stops of difference between them, some beautiful takes can be done.
Fortunately the S50 hasn't the flaw apparently. I hope the S45 can be fixed by a firmware upgrade.