I have had zero issues with this camera I have done a lot of filming with it and I keep it an excellent condition in my office.
For some reason today I put in a fully charged battery and when I opened the LCD it powered on for about 3 seconds then just shut off... I tried multiple charged batteries,same thing... did the same thing when I tried the AC power adaptor.. don't have a clue for what's happening any thoughts???
Unfortunately there is no reliable Sony authorized to send it to besides I'm sure they would say the repair would be as much as the camera

Have you tried by pulling out the viewfinder?

Hey Ron,
Yes did that as well, I mean it stays on maybe 3 seconds, goes off, repeats and then nothing
Ive had zero issues with this camera.
All batteries were fully charged

Have you read these Jim …

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00026927

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00025695

Cheers.

Yea tried all that
Any reputable Sony service centers in US
Everyone I've read has had nothing but horror stories.
Has to be one honest one

Sent the camera off to photo tech by recommendation from BH.
They said it was a VC board that needed to be replaced
517.00
Definitely not worth fixing for that price I'll just try to sell it as is for someone that maybe has a better source for getting it repaired or they can fix it.

Thanks for your inputs

Are you sure you can’t buy a board and do it yourself. Run a search and also check uTube, there’s a few videos showing how you disassemble it. Go slowly.
Cheers.

I saw a used AX53 in pristine condition on ebay for around $600 so don't think it would worth the time effort and risk.

I was watching a channel making a simple repair of replacing the hdmi port but it involve removing the mobo. They had problems reassembling it and damaged the mobo trying to remove and re soldier the hdmi port because they didn't have the proper equipment and experience. They had to order an new mobo and after redoing the repair again, they discovered the colors were out of wack. They contacted the manufacture and discovered they did nothing wrong but when such a repair is done the camera needs to be re-calibrated, which can only be done by them. So they ended sending it back to the manufacture spending more than double what it would have cost if they paid for the repair instead of trying to fix it themself.

Would this be the same for this? Who knows but I wouldn't want to take that risk especially when you're not saving much money doing it yourself.

i had that camcorder and quickly got rid of it. Walking with it was a nightmare to keep steady. I found it was all hype on the Optrical Steady Shot feature was a con, at least on the one I had. So went back to Panasonic which is far better, at least on my HC-X1500 version. the only advantage the Sony had was being able to use a third party wireless remote.

Okay I will try to explain as briefly as I can.
I ended up buying another Ax53 last month it worked for me two times and then last nite it did the same thing powered off immediately when I put in the battery or did the AC. I called BH this morning and they are going to exchange it out.
Now here's the real interesting part
Before I sent it back I decided to put a different SD card in it and see what would happen and it powered up no problem. Then I put that bad SD card that it wouldn't power up with in my initial camcorder that they wanted to charge me for a new video board and it didn't power up either... but when I put a different SD card in my first ax53 it worked perfectly fine.
I then reformatted the card that was causing the issues which is obviously what really happened and both cameras work perfectly fine. I am highly surprised that Photo Tech didn't try what I tried out or otherwise I would have thrown away 517.00
Obviously what happens with these cameras is if the camera senses something not working right or possible an SD card issue it just shuts down.
This was also confirmed when I called Sony up today... of course he told me to only use Sony cards.
I've been using the extreme pro sand disc cards for years
with zero issues on multiple cameras. I also shoot with the Sony z90 which I've had zeros issues with... I even tried the bad card in there but it did not shut down.