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  1. #1
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    Question Do CCD or CMOS chips get "tired" and lose image quality?

    I have a Digital Elph S330 that I have taken many thousands of great pics with. Over the past year I have noticed the pics are becomming increasingly noisy/grainy, unsharp, and perhaps contrasty. It is hard to pin down, but whereas I used to be very impressed with the results, now I am often disappointed at the shots even taken in bright light with a steady hand.

    I know my way around the camera and the settings are the same as way back when (no weird ISO dialed in, I'm not in the wrong white balance setting, the lens is clean, etc). The camera functions the same otherwise, but the pics are just starting to suck.

    Do the CMOS or CCD image capture chips get tired or wear out over time? Some sort of pixel death going on like in old screens? Do they have a useable lifespan?
    Last edited by tscheezy; 04-16-2005 at 02:04 PM.

  2. #2
    Nikon Samurai #14 DownByFive's Avatar
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    Re: Do CCD or CMOS chips get "tired" and lose image quality?

    I was having the same problem with my S230, getting grainy images that just looked like crap. Then I looked at the lens, and whoa baby, was it dirty....I guess a year in the Mediterranean with trips to Egypt and Israel had given a lot of dust and grime the chance to build up. I cleaned the lens and it made a pretty big difference...However....I'm still convinced that it isn't taking the same quality pictures as it was a few months ago...But then again, the aquisition of my D70 may have raised my standards a bit...I haven't shot with my S230 in a while, but I'll try and take some normal shots next time I go out and see if the shots are actually worse than they used to be...


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  3. #3
    Sitting in a Leaky Dingy Michael Fanelli's Avatar
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    Re: Do CCD or CMOS chips get "tired" and lose image quality?

    Quote Originally Posted by tscheezy
    I have a Digital Elph S330 that I have taken many thousands of great pics with. Over the past year I have noticed the pics are becomming increasingly noisy/grainy, unsharp, and perhaps contrasty. It is hard to pin down, but whereas I used to be very impressed with the results, now I am often disappointed at the shots even taken in bright light with a steady hand.

    I know my way around the camera and the settings are the same as way back when (no weird ISO dialed in, I'm not in the wrong white balance setting, the lens is clean, etc). The camera functions the same otherwise, but the pics are just starting to suck.

    Do the CMOS or CCD image capture chips get tired or wear out over time? Some sort of pixel death going on like in old screens? Do they have a useable lifespan?
    I doubt vey much that the sensor would go bad in an incremental way. As with most electronics, its almost always a matter of working/not working.

    Perhaps your tatse has matured and you are seeing things you never noticed before. Artifacts from oversharpening, for exmple, can make the image look bad after a while. There are so many steps in the digital workflow, do you have a new monitor, new computer, new software? One person on another web site was shooting at ISO 400 for almost 6 months because he forgot he had changed it!
    "Every great decision creates ripples--like a huge boulder dropped in a lake. The ripples merge and rebound off the banks in unforseeable ways.

  4. #4
    has-been... another view's Avatar
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    Re: Do CCD or CMOS chips get "tired" and lose image quality?

    I find that it's pretty easy to accidentally change a setting on my Coolpix 5000, much easier than on my DSLR. All those little tiny buttons...

    But if you're sure nothing has changed, then I wonder if it's something wrong with the images or what you're comparing them to. I bought my Coolpix two and a half years ago, and it was my first "real" digital camera. I was very impressed with the image quality in most cases (coming from scanned 35mm chromes). Then a year and a half ago I bought a DSLR and it's a world of difference, image wise - especially in some situations. Now the Coolpix doesn't look as good as it used to...

    What I mean is that maybe it's just other cameras getting better; raising the bar so to speak. After a few thousand exposures, I have a few "hot pixels" on my Coolpix that show up with long exposures (1/4 sec or so). Other than that I'm sure it's as good as it was when it was new.

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