Potential Sony A7 III Sensor Issue to Be Aware Of and How to Fix It

It’s only been a few months since the Sony A7III camera has been released to the public, but already some folks have begun reporting a weird issue related to the camera. Long story short, there seems to be a glitch in the A7 III’s sensor, specifically near the bottom center/left area of the frame during XAVC S 4K (PAL 25p) recording. Occasionally, users see multiple jittery and blocky blue and white lines in that certain area of the captured footage.

While this may not be a problem for some Sony A7 III shooters, others may find the strange glitch completely unacceptable. Fortunately, after a lot of digging through help guides of older camera models, Chris Rule of Biscuits Live has found a possible solution.

First of all, here’s a screen grab that visualizes the bug itself. If you look closer, you should be able to see the weird line that appears at the bottom of the frame.

According to some users, this problem is caused by some manufacturing problems of the A7 III sensor. Since the camera doesn’t provide a “Pixel remap” option by default, you can still perform the remapping of the problematic pixels by changing the date in the camera’s menu.

Bear in mind, though, that by using this solution, you won’t be able to solve the initial cause of the problem. You’ll only be able to bypass it. That being said, go into the camera menu and access the Date and Time settings. Change the year on the camera to a higher value such as 2037 or above. Afterward, switch off the camera.

Once the device is completely powered off, you’ll need to restart it and access the Time and Date settings once more. Change the date back to the current year. Again, switch the camera off, wait a few seconds, then turn it back on. Hopefully, the strange sensor glitch will be gone.

Alternatively, you can take your chances by downloading the just released firmware 1.01 for the Sony A7 III and see if this can help. According to the next video, the latter solution should fix the strange blinking pixel issue permanently, but be aware that you might come across a problem with the installation of the driver if you are on a Mac computer running the Mac OS v10.13.4.

Either way, feel free to share your personal experience with the pesky blinking pixel phenomenon in case your Sony A7 III has already been affected.

[source: biscuitsalive]

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