I have a brand new SD870. When I use it under fluorescent lighting, and particularly when pointing at something bright or white (e.g. a wall, or sheet of paper) the LCD screen flickers rapidly, somewhere around 5 to 10 cycles per second. It appear to me that the camera is hunting for either the proper exposure or white balance, but it flickers much more rapidly than the normal camera response to brightness or white balance changes. Then, when I press the shutter button halfway, it continues the same cycling, but at a much slower rate, taking more than 3 seconds to complete a cycle.
I thought it was hunting for the proper white balance, since it cycles between a yellowish to a bluish tinge to the whites, and I can get different white balance depending on when I press the shutter. However, it does this on all white balance settings, including both of the manual fluorescent settings which presumably should be fixed white balance.
The camera doesn't have manual shutter or aperture controls, so I can't lock the exposure to test, but I'm thinking it is exposure hunting.
I tried an SD750 in the same conditions, and it doesn't show any such flickering. Also, I haven't noticed this type of behavior on any other digital cameras I've used.
It gets annoying under fluorescent lighting, but under other conditions I haven't noticed any problems. I'm wondering if this is a defective camera, or is this normal behavior for the SD870?
