help image stabalizing system
 

My vx-2000 appears to have a slight problem. I was shooting a wedding yesterday on a tripod and not moving it. When i zoomed in some i noticed the image moving slightly left to right, and up and down a little also.
I think the optical stabalization is messed up on it becasue the first time i noticed it, we where driving on a really bumpy dirt road with the camera on the floorboards of the car. when i tried to film with it later that night you could literaly see the lens pivoting forward and backwards even though i was filming with the camera on a dresser. I turned it on again the next day when i was on an airplane and the problem seemed completly fixed, but i guess not.
Any one know any good places to get cameras checked out at or what the problem and easy fix could be?
Thanks for your time.

Yeow. Treating a camera in that manner is almost always going to bite you sooner or later.

If you turn off the OIS, does the problem go away?

AFAIK, you cannot see the OIS in operation as it is back in the lens (that rectangular section). Sounds like you have another or several problems. The shifting could easily be caused by the tilt of any lens element.

Armatos is a good repair center in NYC. But if there is much wrong with the camera, Sony, with their one price fixes all may be better. The only problem is if they determine that the camera has been physically abused, they may even refuse to work on it.\

Good luck.

Thanks Mike when i turn the ois off the moving appears to go away. I may give sony a call this week and see how there prices are. Thank you very much for the advice.

You can indeed see the VAP working on the VX/PD cameras, as it's the second element in the lens line up. You can also hear it working with your ear to the VAP rectangular housing, and turning it off in the menu quietens the camera considerably.

It sounds to me Eric that you do indeed have a fault - as if the VAP is oscillating from limit to limit rather than obeying the input from the OIS CPU. Without that magical OIS the camera is a sad thing.

tom.

As a sanity check, the OIS will cycle like that in the presence of EMI including that from family radios (like you buy at Radio Shack) to severe transits in the presence of strong radio transmitters and photographer's strobes.

Actually the OIS is a good thing to turn off when you use a tripod as it can cause motion artifacts when you pan and tilt the camera. Mine is off most of the time.

How'd you figure out what cause the ois problems Mike? I know my ois was only hitting the stops when i went to a place called jackson's hole wyoming(sp?), and quite hitting the stops when i boarded the airplane the next day. So i guess my camcorder is working normall maybe? I can post a little clip of what the image looks like if i zoom in and have ois on(on a tripod).

A CNN videographer that does the same thing I do, ride with the police told me that he had the same problem and that was the cause.

If you place the camera in operation and click the transmit button on a portable transmitter, including CB, wireless headsets, family radios, police radios, the OIS will slam into the stops hard enough to jerk the camera in your hands. You can hear it hit with a loud clunk.

Jackson's Hole? No wonder. That place is loaded with metallic deposits, that skew all sorts of frequencies. Many people have trouble using sensitive instruments there and the gyroscopic image-stabilizer in a camera may be susceptible as well, in such a place. Years ago, I was doing surveying work there, using a telurometer (T-meter) pair, that sends a precise group of radio frequencies back and forth, to measure longer distances. We could hardly get them to work and the results were unusable.

An airplane would also put out numerous frequencies that might interfere with it.

Make sure you've really got a lasting problem, before you put your pocketbook at the mercy of the repair people.

With my shoulder-mount/steadying rig, I can shoot with my VX2100's stabilizer off and hardly notice a difference. Before 1992, we shot video and didn't miss the stabilizers we'd never had.

Steve McDonald