UPDATE:
Got the camera back from Canon repair. Screen seem to be working. According to the paperwork, an ‘internal component was not properly connected causing noise to occur. The main PCB ass’y was replaced.’  A connection was loose so they just replaced everything? Ok, as long as it works. Hopefully this will be the end of the problems.

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If you regularly read my blog you may remember that I had to send my Mark III in for repair because the joystick nub fell off in late July. Canon did a fine job, giving me free shipping in both directions and doing the work under warranty as it should have been.

A couple of weeks ago I used the camera on an ad shoot which included a piece of sheet metal lit in a way that included all kinds of gradients across it’s surface. When we pulled the shots up on the camera there was all kinds of banding in the shadows, so bad in fact that we had to keep taking the card over to a laptop to check out the files and make sure they were ok (I wasn’t shooting tethered because Lightroom 4 doesn’t yet tether to the Mark III and I can’t stand the Canon software to do it.)

At the time it bothered me and I remember the screen being amazing when I first got the camera, like spot-on. So this morning during a bout of insomnia I got up at 5:30AM and dug up the receipt they send along with the repair and on the Parts Description line it says:

SCREEN, FOCUS 5PCS/BOX

Which says that they had to replace the whole back of the camera in order to fix at little nub, and in the process they swapped out my good original screen with a bum new one.  So I called CPS up again an hour ago and I’m sending the camera in once again to get fixed. Luckily it’s the end of the month of August which is when everyone who hires me is on the beach in the Hamptons so hopefully this will get back before I really need it.

Just so you can see what I mean, here’s an iphone picture of the screen above the actual picture file of a photo of my dark painted background. Please excuse any white balance differences.