My SD500 had the whine big time. It ruins the video. I disagree with the opinion that this type of whine is OK in a small camera.
So, since coincidentally the LCD also broke, I sent mine in to be repaired. I included a letter that specifically requested they fix the whine on video capture. Amazingly they replaced my LCD at no cost but the whine seems to be the same. The report order noted my request, but they didnt's specfically say they worked on it. The Service Details on the order said:
"Replaced LCD Panel. Clean and checked all function for good working order."
Oh well, too bad. Too late to return. I'll probably try to buy another one without the whine and then sell this one eBay.
My SD500 had the whine big time. It ruins the video. I disagree with the opinion that this type of whine is OK in a small camera.
So, since coincidentally the LCD also broke, I sent mine in to be repaired. I included a letter that specifically requested they fix the whine on video capture. Amazingly they replaced my LCD at no cost but the whine seems to be the same.
That's very disappointing. I'm now glad that I didn't take Canon up on their offer to repair the whine on my first SD500.
I got my second one and it has the whine, just like the first. Im gonna try for a 3rd. I had an SD300 and SD400 for a while, and neither had any hum or whine. My SN is 042140XXXX. I posted some video whine samples at http://homepage.mac.com/lannyfr/SD500TESTIMAGES/ and I called Canon support. They said they never heard of it, tried their in office camera and said they had no problem, to either return it or send it to them for repair. Ha. I sent an e-mail too, and this time included links to samples from myself and other samples that more people had posted, as well as to some of the threads in this and the Digital Photography Review about the whine. I will report back on what their response is, and how my 3rd camera try goes.
I too have got my second one and i get the same whine! Anyone beginning to think it's because of the memory card? I haven't tried any other. Currently using a Kingmax 512MB 66x.
Mine is 032130xxx and seems to have less whine than what other people have posted; although there is something there that my old s500 movies did not, it is very slight. Actually, the level of that "something" changes with each movie I take, so I don't know what's causing it, but it's never severe. Sometimes it's not even there.
Yeah, thats so wierd...mine seem to varie in pitch and tone too. I took 2 one right after the other, exactly the same location, camera settings and scene, and one was high pitched and the other a bit lower in pitch, but equally loud and disruptive. This second camera is getting a lot more static pops than the first one did too.
Well, I just heard back from Canon re the whine issue. Here is their infuriating reply:
"Thank you for contacting Canon product support. We value you as a Canon
customer and appreciate the opportunity to assist you. We apologize for
any inconvenience with the PowerShot SD500 getting a whine noise when
recording.
This is not a known issue for our cameras. We can offer you the
warranty option of having the camera looked at by a hands on technician
at our factory if you prefer not to keep swapping the units."
This is totally useless and they still wont acknowledge that there is an issue here after all the calls and emails we have all sent them, and the samples and links I sent in my original e-mail.
Just fyi, here is the e-mail I had sent to them last night, to see what their response would be: "Dear Canon Representative,
I am writing in regard to the issue of audio whine in the SD500. This issue is well documented in the digital photography forums where people have said they contacted Canon about it, however Canon representatives continually report that it when we report it, this is the first they have heard of it.
I am particularly concerned, because I just purchased an SD500, and it had the whine. There are people on line who stated that they returned their unit 2 or 3 times till they got a noise free unit. I did a swap yesterday and came home with another unit that shows whine. I know it is NOT a limitation of ultra-compact cameras (as one forum member was told by Canon) because I previously had an SD300 and SD400 both of which were whine free, and others on line said they eventually got whine free units. Also, it is not from the focus or zoom within the camera because the SD300 and SD400 I had were completely whine free.
So I am writing to Canon to ask what is the story with this camera. I cant see paying $500 for something that has a major feature that doesnt work properly. Is there a quality control issue here or are all SD500s like this? I have a 7 day return window from my retailer, so if you can tell me that this is not an inherant problem with the SD500, then I will return the unit to the store and keep trying to swap units till I can find one that is whine free until I finally get one. If this is a problem with ALL SD500s, then I will give up on this camera and swap to something else, which is a shame because I love Canon color and I am very pleased with the image quality of this camera. Also, the reviewer at Digital Camera Resource Page made note in his review that people were complaining about the high pitched whine that people were getting when recording in quiet rooms, but his unit was fine, indicating that there ARE whine free units out there.
Here are a few links to CANON FORUM THREADS ON THE WHINE ISSUE, with a lot of people commenting on their SD500 having whine, and some who dont have the whine problem:
I got mine last week and also has that high pitched whine sound underlying everything, I sort of wonder if the cause might be some auto level sound adjustment which works to make the mikrophone less sensitive in noisy environments and rews it up in silent ones which results in some circuit noise filtering in...
my old canon S300 had no such big problem, also if some people here don't have problems, I don't want to offend somebody but people have ears so bad you wouldn't belive, what is unaceptable to one is ok for another, maybe some folks have tiny plastic speakers they listen to the sound on or they just hear poorly, always happens when you get info from somebody who you don't know (again, nobody should take this personally, those reporting no noise might just be lucky with their unit)
I would be more interested in finding some noise removal via software processing of the soundtrack, it would be easy for me to clean the sound if I knew of some denoising program that would work on this
I tried Nero wave editor but as layman in these things, I just turned those fricking nobs (what a *&^%^ interface design) but didn't get any good result, only some partial success
Repair failed to fix it
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