Sony Support/Service - My opinion

[classiccameras]

Would it have ever got to this situation with Nikon, Canon or even Pentax!!

Pete

[bfitzgerald]

Nikon are quick to turn around repairs, but don't seem to fix them! (based on my own experience) Pentax well they just tell you a firmware update is coming and it never shows up, basically they had flawed AF modules on the Kr/K5 models and never addressed that during manufacture. None is satisfactory.

With Sony I'm amazed that it takes over 6 weeks to fail to fix the main problem, I'd be pretty astonished if Canon's service is as bad as that!
Sadly this isn't unique to Sony I cannot say Nikon or Pentax proved satisfactory.

[bfitzgerald]

Another email from Sony UK

Dear Mr Fitzgerald
Thank you for your reply.

I appreciate your feedback and concern regarding the experience you have had with your camera.
Your comments will be taken into consideration by Sony.
I wish I could be of greater assistance and please never hesitate to reply to this email in case you need any further help.

Yours Sincerely,
Maha

Sony United Kingdom and Ireland, a division of Sony Europe Limited.
A company registered in England and Wales. Registered office: The Heights, Brooklands, Weybridge, Surrey, KT130XW Registered company number: 2422874


I really don't know why they bothered even sending it. Taken into consideration! Wow
I'm passing my thoughts on to the 3 main Sony facebook sites, UK, Eire, USA

I'm afraid hands in pockets inaction doesn't cut it around here.
You can find the UK FB page here

http://www.facebook.com/SonyUK

[Greg Beetham]

Barry I thought the dealer was still doing something about the camera, aren’t they? Or is the extended warranty ‘it’?
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

I've to call into the seller tomorrow, but I'm not accepting 2 months extra warranty when the camera is gone for more than 2 months
I have recourse with the seller (I'll tell them I'm not waiting for repairs for an unreasonable time you can forget 6 weeks!) but the issue is Sony are going to have to come up with something better than that. (2 month warranty extra cover)

And frankly even a replacement at this time isn't going to solve the bad support and initial run around joke I got first time around.

[bfitzgerald]

Another tedious Sony email. I will try to drop into the retailer this afternoon.

Dear Mr Fitzgerald

Thank you for your reply. Although we try to make sure that we satisfy our customer in any way possible, we have limited options that we can provide you with in this case. You must take whatever actions you feel are necessary/ pertinent for you. However we would like to confirm that our department is more than happy to take full ownership of your case if you wish and keep the 2 months warranty extension for you.

I am sorry that on this occasion we cannot be of direct help and apologies for any further disappointment that this reply may cause.

Yours Sincerely

Hesham Rayan
Sony United Kingdom and Ireland, a division of Sony Europe Limited.

[bfitzgerald]

Went to the retailer and they are fine I've no problems with them, and they assured me that I would not have to wait as long as the first repair. They will chase it up after the easter break.

Someone suggested facebook, I'm now hitting Sony on a global level across multiple regions sharing my story, from Russia, to Canda, to Italy, Spain, South Africa and any other areas I can think of. If anything comes of it who knows but I feel obliged to share this frankly awful experience.

Wandering back to the Dynax 5d and the CCD I think that the newer CMOS sensors whilst they have superior high ISO performance, they tend to show noise sooner at lower ISO levels. With the latest 24mp CMOS images I'm looking at even at low ISO have some noise. Not that this would bother me with my film vibe etc etc. The 16mp again shows more noise at lower ISO levels and sooner than the older CCD, not as bad as the high pixel density CMOS ones. Problem is we have no modern up to date CCD so we can't really compare.

Tones wise the 5d is a hard act to beat esp for portrait shooting, though I was not unhappy at all with the A57 for colour rendering (raw) New CMOS sensor yet more DR no question, but highlights can still be blown. I'm so used to the 5d and the images way it performs that DR isn't a major issue bar very harsh lighting.

[bfitzgerald]

Update:
I've been quite active on this talking to the retailer and the local Sony service centre (who now actually are in contact with me) as well as facebook. The result is I seem to have got their attention (to a degree)

The local repair place forwarded this message to me:

"Our engineer has taken around 200 pictures and we haven’t been able to see the fault. The pictures have been taken in RAW+JPEG under many different lighting conditions.

The pictures we were sent this week are the original pictures from when the camera was originally returned. We rectified the green lines on pictures by replacing the IM imager unit. Is the customer able to confirm if the pictures provided were taken when the unit was returned from first repair as we are still unable to locate the reported fault."

So I sent another shot I took showing the same issue after I got it back from repair (see below)


I also got an email from Sony HQ from this guy which reads:
Dear Mr Fitzgerald,

Thank you for contacting Sony Europe. Your complaint regarding your SLT-A57 camera has been forwarded to myself.

Please provide me with the following information:

The name of the repair agent you have sent your camera to and the contact information you have for the repair agent.

Once you have supplied this I will contact the repair agent and find out the reasons behind the delay in repairing your camera.

I will then contact you to discuss the matter further.

Best regards,

Chris McDonald
Customer Relations Officer
SONY SUPPORT TEAM

On Monday I outlined the scenario (ie the whole story) I have not had a response yet

Green line was present upon the camera's return

DSC07042.JPG

(126.5 KiB) Downloaded 1526 times

I will update things when I have more information, but I'm roughly at the 10 week time period now (bit over) total time camera spent away for repair.
It didn't take me long to spot the Green line issue on the returned camera, so I'm puzzled how a Sony Engineer can't. It doesn't happen in normal shooting but it is very obvious in strongly back lit pictures such as the window ones I have posted on the other thread. If they think it's rectified, then I'm sorry but that ain't looking fixed to me!

I again tried to get the same effect using the 2 x Km5d's I have. I was not able to do so even shooting in very strong backlighting

[mikeriach]

Update:
So I sent another shot I took showing the same issue after I got it back from repair (see below)

I again tried to get the same effect using the 2 x Km5d's I have. I was not able to do so even shooting in very strong backlighting

Email similar KM5D pics as well for comparrison or have you already thought of that?

Mike

[agorabasta]

That green line comes from the current flowing from the sensels into the power lines on the sensor as they are horizontal while signal lines are vertical on those Sony sensors. Means the sensels go into photovoltaic mode as they overflow and the power lines (or the supply source) have the resistance too high and the voltage shifts from nominal. That could be happening mostly at/around the base ISO, at the higher ISO's it may only happen in presence of strongly overbright areas in the image. And I would first suspect the sensor design flaw; but that may well be some other electronic problem.

[Greg Beetham]

The green band does seem to be associated with the much overexposed area, but there is no green band over that, why? And why green particularly, is it just because there are many more green pixels or some other reason?
I’d like to know if the overexposed area was exposed properly does the green band still appear.
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

Yes the green band is there but less obvious at a lower exposure. It's a problem at low and high ISO shooting (doesn't seem to make any difference)
If I grossly overexpose the 5d's I still don't get green bands!

I got this today
Dear Mr Fitzgerald,

I have spoken to the repair centre and they have advised they aren't able to replicate the fault. Which is why they have requested you send sample photos.
Best regards,
Chris McDonald
Customer Relations Officer

I sent him the sample too.
It's not hard to get this band problem, but it only shows in high contrast situations.


I posted this on the green line thread, but I'll post it here again. This looks pretty similar
http://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/51245250

[Greg Beetham]

The Nikon artifacts in that large thread are similar except they seem to be reversed as far as the green goes, the green lines in many of the examples seem to be associated with the narrow darker parts of the overexposed window but they have what looks like a slightly pink grey tone in alignment with the bright parts of the overexposed window in some of the examples at least.
A camera should be able to render an image without creating artifacts that don’t exist in reality, even if parts of the image are outside its dynamic range.
Greg

[bfitzgerald]

Yes it appears to be like that. Similar but a bit different as you say. Notice how the green line I have stops in the overexposed areas and then starts again (either side of the window area) I've not seen this on previous cameras I have used, such as the Pentax ones or the D7000 which had basically a very similar/same sensor.

I'm not sure when I will hear from Sony again, but time has rolled on here so I'd be looking for something to be done about it.

[Greg Beetham]

I’m wondering how IDC renders the image? I’m also wondering about the ARW cab file JPEG and if that is now the cue for other third party programs on how to interpret/render the main ARW file? And what if the rendering of the cab file JPEG by the camera system is not as good as it should be?
Greg