Ugh.

    On the 7th of March with the help of my siblings, I was able to purchase a brand new Canon EOS R8 mirrorless camera body through Walmart's generous offer of $400,00 off the retail price. Due to my finances, and my never having issues with Canon's product reliability, I decided to hold off buying an extended warranty, which is something I otherwise customarily do. "Uh-oh," I hear you say, "I can see where this going!"

A cropped still frame from the 2025-03-10 unboxing video.

    Well, for the very first time in my 44 years of Canon photographic equipment ownership, something was awry with the performance of the camera body, although I did not know it at first. There was a stark white vertical line in both the viewfinder and LCD screens and a corresponding white crosshair in the playback. (See below.) 

    Initially, I thought they were deliberate, perhaps acting as a frame of reference of some sort. Eventually, I surmised, I would learn how to disable the unusual feature. However, after a week of pouring through the 937 page instruction manual, I could find no mention or depiction of the lines.

    Then I discovered, the crosshair was ending up in my actual images. It wasn't confined to the camera screens! 

    Ugh.

    Having alerted my sister, I proceeded to contact Canon Chat. When the technician had me do a factory reset - it failed - he postulated the likelihood of a sensor malfunction.

    So now the R8 is on its way to Canon for a warranty repair.

The sensor anomaly with a lens attached.

The sensor anomaly without.

     We shall see, as they say, and hopefully, it won't be the image artifact when the body is returned.

UPDATE: The repair was successful and the return effected in short order. I still have to test the other functions as time goes by.