The Mark III is back (again)

I received the email and tracking number at 6:30am this morning informing me it had shipped from NJ via FedEx overnight. Visits from the brown box fairy are always nice morning treats, and around 10am, I got one. After carefully unpacking everything in case I need the box for something else, I found the service tag. And the official "service detail" from Canon was… drumroll please…

"Tighten the imager connector between D PCB ass’y and imager sensor. Clean and check."

About three seconds after I read it, the scene where Ralphie decodes the "Be sure to drink your ovaltine" message clearly popped into my head. It just didn’t seem like enough of an explanation. For whatever reason, I had expected just a few more tiny crumbs of information about what had gone horribly wrong. Oh well. I don’t know what the hell the "imager connector" is, but whatever they tightened seems to have really done the trick (so far). I took a few test shots and none of them had any trace of the lines that were showing up before. My hunch about what happened is still pretty much the same as what I said before – somehow the cold was making a connector constrict just enough to mung up the data coming from the sensor, resulting in the weird digital grid lines. Since the high temperature today was a balmy 61° (Feb. 7th!) I’ll have to wait for another chilly morning to really test it out. Everything appears to be working correctly, including the focusing, which somehow seems to be even a hair more accurate. Probably just psychological at this point. As a bonus, I have to say that my camera looked impeccably cleaned – no dust, cardboard flecks or anything in the viewfinder or sensor whatsoever. So thank you Canon, for being prompt and courteous with your warranty repair, and returning a nice, clean, fully functional camera to me. I’m glad to have her back. For now.