ND Filter troubles

brazzam

brazzam

Well-known member
I wanted to post a little word of warning to my fellow FS700 shooters.

Yesterday, while at a shoot, my ND wheel got slightly stuck. As I needed to continue shooting, I jiggled the switch slightly until it got loose. However, when it got loose, the wheel was out of phase and the filters were stuck cutting off parts of my image. I was able to get the filters carefully balanced between the switch positions to be able to finish the shoot, but it was a bit of a nightmare.

At the end of the shoot, when as I was putting the camera away and trying to see if I could find a way to undo the failure, the switch ended up jamming to complete failure. I am sending it in to the service center this week (and going to get the firmware upgrade while it's there) so I can get the unit back into working order.

Anyways, just wanted to caution everyone to be careful with the ND filter switches. At least in the case of my unit, they're not the most hardily constructed mechanism.
 
This happened to me yesterday as well. It was totally out of position. I just switched the filter hard up to ND4 till it got back into place. It really is flimsy and right now I'm very careful with it since it's in the proper position. Let us know what it ends up costing to get it fixed.
 
Were you guys able to get it back to the Zero ND position? That would sort of OK since I usually carry a variable ND filter left over from my DSLR days.

Did you guys get it to work by wiggling the ND dial? The ND dial does seem really cheaply made.
 
I was able to get it back into position with a few hard pushes pushing the ND switch to ND4. Once it was fixed I'm very tender with the switching as they all work fine right now. When I first got it, I noticed it was very flimsy. It's ok. I'm loving S-LOG2 a lot!
 
I too tried to wiggle it back into position, but mine is now jammed. The switch will not move and the sensor is currently completely blocked, so the camera is unusable.

I will update everyone with the cost of the repair once I find out from the service center.
 
The exact same thing happened to me when I first got my FS700 last year. It was actually the first shoot I did with it. Sony just replaced the whole unit as mine was less than 7 days old when it happened which was ok but I had to continue shooting what I was shooting on my 5dmk2 which wasn't ideal. Definitely something to be super careful with on the FS700. I'm so gentle when applying ND now in fear that it will happened again.
 
The ND filters on the Panasonic camera I have (AG-AC160A) seems solid enough. Anyone know of cameras where the ND filter settings can be manipulated from a remote? What's the point of being able to adjust focus, iris, zoom, on/off at a remote but NOT ND?
 
Had the same problem today during shoot in NY, filter stuck in the middle and that was the end of the shoot...

Alan, any idea yet what the cost will be to repair?
 
Oh man! That's really tough - I feel for you. I know I was really annoyed the day it happened to me, so I know the frustration.

I honestly do not know how much they'll charge for that repair. Sony only charged me for the 4K upgrade when I sent it in, as I did that upgrade and the repair at the same time. I believe they fixed the ND filter under warranty, even though my camera was a few weeks past the one-year from purchase.

I'd be interested to hear about it once you find out... I have a suspicion that unless they are doing something to reinforce the mechanism during the repair, that this could happen again and I'd love to know what kind of fee I'm facing if it happens the future. For now, I'm just being EXTREMELY careful with the switch so I can avoid it if at all possible.
 
I think I remember reading a statement from a Sony rep or similar where they said that a general service of the camera is included in the 4K/3.0 upgrade cost. So I guess they can just have included the ND realignment in that...
 
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