oops a double post.

I also use manual focus and have had my EX3 since October 2008. So far the issue has not manifested itself even after a three hour shoot. "If it's not broke-don't fix it" is how I was raised as a Broadcast Engineer. Moreover, I'm not going to ship my camera 1000's of Km to a Sony depot at either end of the Country to have this done. The local Sony dealer is clueless as to EXn issues and I would not trust them to do anything firmware related. YMMV. Cheers!

Having recently upgraded to 1.03 I was concerned that I didnt' have the latest firmware version 1.04. 1.03 fixes the focus issue. 1.04, according to Sony SJ has to do with the flicker setting. Here's the reply I got from Sony:

Your camera was upgraded to V1.03 on 2/5/09. The new version was released recently. The difference between V1.03 and V1.04 is V1.03 has default setting of “Auto” and “50Hz” for “flicker reduce”. V1.04 has default setting of “OFF” and “60HZ”. Once you set the “flicker reduce” to “OFF” and “60Hz”, the unit will stay at the setting similar to V1.04 unless you reset to default setting.

Just out of curiosity I checked my camera to see if they new firmware had nuked my flicker setting adjustment. It hadn't so my settings had been restored to the pre-firmware update process. I have my flicker reduce set to "on" for 60Hz and it is still that way, thank goodness.