What causes this defect?

My wife took some pictures on a recent Caribbean sailing trip using her Powershot S230. A number of photos taken in high daylight have a light purple and lined area instead of white. Most of the photos taken in reduced lighting seem to be OK, although one of them is also highly defective.

In places where the photo is purple/pink there is always horizontal banding visible as well. The rest of the photo has much less of the banding, but it's still visible.

I spent a minute playing with one of the defective ones in PS Elements and can't seem to easily fix it. It was humid on the trip but she kept the camera as dry as possible in a sealed bag.

Is this user-fixable or is it time to take the camera (now about 5 years old) to the shop?

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When I had something like this happen to me on my 30D, it was the result of a bad CF card. You might want to check the card you are using.

How high was the ambient air temp?

Call Canon. This almost sounds like a textbook example of the problem described in Canon's Service Notice, which we've stickied.

FlyingPhotog wrote in post #5535221
How high was the ambient air temp?

Temps ranged from 77 degrees at night to 84 degrees during the day, with high daytime humidity. She kept the camera in a case except when using it.

Jon wrote in post #5535932
Call Canon. This almost sounds like a textbook example of the problem described in Canon's Service Notice, which we've stickied.

Thanks for the advice and the link, which was quite interesting. I did call Canon and they've arranged for me to send it in to them to evaluate and see if it qualifies for free repair, which it certainly sounds like it might.

It certainly looks like quite a few customers with similar problems have been very satisfied with Canon's handling of the problem. I'm anxious to see how it turns out.

Follow Up:

I sent the unit to Canon and they replaced it with a refurbished SD450. So I ended up with 5 MP instead of 3MP, a bigger display screen, 105 mm zoom instead of the 70mm on the s230, and the ability to turn on the flash independently. Only downside was that it uses a different memory card, but it looks like SD cards sell for about 20 bucks for 2 GB, and I can use the CF card in my 30D.

Good for Canon, replacing a defective camera long out of warranty with a better model at no cost whatsoever.