Fuji Finepix S9500/9000 colour issues, black isn't showing up - comparison photos inc

[chaucolai]

Hi there,
My aunt just gave me a freebie camera, a Fuji Finepix S9000/9500 (differs on the region), telling me that the colours were screwed. She runs a photography eBay shop, so no idea how this has happened.
I'm hoping for something software-related, as it appears to be.
The colours are very warm, very browny when they should be crisp on the Fuji. Fine, you think - it's a camera from 2005. But it's worse than anything and it's way worse than the sample pictures I've seen taken with others of the same camera. The main problem is that absolute black is impossible to capture.


Comparison photos with a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ8...

A black shirt with pattern on it, which has faded to plain black to the naked eye/the Panasonic but is clearly visible on the Fuji as it shows the dark pattern and changes the black of the background to light brown


Comparing a navy blue couch with the jet black All Blacks sleeping bag and ski jacket next to it


When I saw the camera I instantly thought that it would be a white balance problem or something, so I changed the white bal setting off auto and onto "indoors" (or something similar), which seemed to help (not so noticeable at night, when I remembered to take sample shots). However, the black was still off.


Any help, anyone? I'm hoping it's a software issue, as it seems to pick up all dark colours apart from very dark black well.


EDIT: Uhh... how do you make images smaller? Heh. Oops.

[Anbesol]

Looks like a bad sensor. Find out what the real white balance is in your room, in kelvin AND tint, and put that in your camera. It is likely to be something like 2500k and +5m, but the magenta tint looks funky, so the tint could go anywhere. The S9000 should allow you to manually input color temperature. Or, shoot RAW and process the white balance in conversion.

This also might be a case of very bad auto white balance, its just peculiar how its still bad white balance when you set it for "indoors". Looks like its always favoring magenta a little heavy.

Anyway like I said I think its a bad sensor, just go through some motions to confirm its the sensor before you trash it (or repair). Here is a link to a 'for parts/repair' s9000.

It won't be easy to fix it though, but if you can be certain it is the sensor, at least you could give it a shot. Most cameras are just totalled when they stop working, but I think the s9000 might be worthy of repair.