[Greeneg]

I bought my K20D a little over a year ago and have truly enjoyed it. All of a sudden, I am noticing a line in some of the pictures ( see attached image). Can anyone tell me what this is, what to do about it.

The line is just below the text in the attached picture, it looks like noise to me but I am worried that I have a camera sensor problem. The images were shot in RAW and converted in Lightroom 3.

Thanks for your help.

Ed Green

Attached Images

 

[epqwerty]

To me that looks like a possible sensor problem. Or it could possibly be memory card failure. but I'm leaning towards the sensor.

[Greeneg]

Thanks, that's, of course what I'm afraid of also. It isn't present on all photos and I thought for a while that it was just one lens and related to a particular zoom setting, but have since found out that it's more than one lens and seems to appear at random.

Anyone have any thought about what to do other than return the camera to Pentax for repair?

[Parallax]

I will ask the obvious: Have you tried a different SD card? I know that is grasping at straws, but before sending it in I would want to eliminate every possible non-sensor related problem.

[Stafflover]

Try an other sd card, if the problem remains there's no other option then send it back for repair...

[jolepp]

With some luck this could be a memory card problem as suggested above, so trying another card would probably be a good idea before sending the camera to repair. The horizontal line looks bad as this is consistent with a problem with a sensor row (say, a bad sensor pin solder joint :-(

[Greeneg]

Thanks for the thought, it does appear on more than one card. I just returned from a 3 week trip where I took over 900 images in RAW and actually used two 8G cards and started on a third; the artifact seems to be on all three cards.

Thanks for the thought, any others more than welcome.

The one bright spot ( not an Artifact ) is that I bought the camera in July of 2009 and it does have the extended warranty, so it should be fixable.

[eccs19]

The one bright spot ( not an Artifact ) is that I bought the camera in July of 2009 and it does have the extended warranty, so it should be fixable.

I would definitely send it in based on this information. Should be little or not cost to you.

[Greeneg]

Thanks very much, it looks as though that's going to be the plan.

[krmitchell1055]

I had a bad CF card once that I used in a Minolta Dimage 7i. The image would show up as three split-apart pieces that didn't match. If I were you, I'd try a different card and see if that fixes it. Or you could lend or card to someone else to see if the card does the same in their camera.

[Greeneg]

I've tried three different cards and they all seem to do it, so I really suspect the sensor.

Thanks for the thought.

[hut234]

Yeah, I believe the line doesn't have the randomness that a media error would give it, even when it's a localized glitch. Also that it alternates red and green regularly.

Bummer. But have you tried taking all of your current software out of the equation? I had been using an Apple action to batch convert Tiffs from RGB to sRGB and discovered that about one in a hundred ended up with a (different looking) glitch stripe.

[Greeneg]

Actually, I talked to Pentax this morning and they suggested sending it back so it's on its way to the Hospital. We'll see what they say. Also, the line seems to be on the RAW images also.

Thanks,

[Greeneg]

Just to update and close this one out, apparently the CRIS people did find that the sensor was defective and have replaced it and the camera is on its way home to Papa. So if you see that sort of artifact (original post in thread) it probably is a failing sensor.

Thanks everyone for your input and help.