Your comments have a lot of flagrant errors based on assumptions and judgements. For example, “At that point an engineering team was tasked with designing a fix, testing it, and handing it off to the production and repair groups.” How could a quality engineering team do all of those things between April 19 (a Thursday) when the light leak was announced and April 23 (a Monday) when they announced there was a light leak resolution? This doesn’t even make sense…”Over-engineering things to make you feel better about them is bad for the company long-term (and they are who pay your salary, so disregard at your own peril).” How do they pay our salary? Yet again flagrant errors based on assumptions and judgements.

The whole point of engineering is to design products that can be built to serve a purpose. The purpose of a full-frame digital SLR is to take good pictures in a variety of conditions. That is main reason why people buy them. Someone at Canon decided to fix this. Maybe they thought it would help the tiny fraction of users that may actually experience the problem, maybe they wanted to be sure their camera does the best job out to the limits of it’s operation, or maybe they didn’t want to be dragged through the mud more over such a trivial issue. At that point an engineering team was tasked with designing a fix, testing it, and handing it off to the production and repair groups. Now that part of the point of engineering where I said “can be built” includes the need for the product to be commercially viable. If there are several ways to fix something with equal reliability and performance, you have to choose the least expensive. Over-engineering things to make you feel better about them is bad for the company long-term (and they are who pay your salary, so disregard at your own peril). The Canon engineers found a way to use tape to block the light completely. The tape solves the problem at a minimal cost with no adverse effects. That is the definition of an optimal solution.

You and Antiquity may like to dismiss this tape as “duct tape” but it’s not. It won’t leave a gummy mess inside your camera body because it was engineered for applications like this and has already been used in cameras for many years. It’s more expensive than duct tape because it performs better for this specialized purpose. If it was all-purpose and cheap, you’d find it in every hardware store (like duct tape). If you don’t understand the difference, don’t pretend to understand engineering design decisions and stop presenting yourself as some sort of authority. If you do know the difference, you’re being disingenuous when you deride it as “duct tape” and claim it is a gooey mess.

Future hardware versions may well modify the LCD module to stop light there. That doesn’t diminish the fact that this is the best retrofit solution. Did you even read the post Roger linked to where he praised the broad sheets of similar tape?

Dishearted, Antiquity: Your opinion of the internal aesthetics is utterly irrelevant to others. Your obsessions are not a problem for a reasonable consumer. I’ve already wasted far too much text on refuting your position. Oh well.

And regarding the resale concerns others mention, everyone should know that a used camera is only worth as much as someone else will pay you for it. Early adopters should be ok with the idea that they may not get as much money when selling an earlier copy of a camera. It doesn’t matter if the annoying potential customers are being reasonable and fair or not about such matters, your serial number falling in a particular range might scare certain buyers off and could affect the price you can get. It’s just one of many risks you take if you want to buy early and sell later. Get used to it or find better buyers.

How do you handle having your car repaired?—”No no no, your repair was too simple. You have to do something much more involved. I don’t care whether your repair worked perfectly or not. I paid top dollar for this car, and its repairs should reflect that. Accepting mediocrity is what killed Detroit.” Am I being fair? Do I understand your position adequately well?

Each to his own, but when I see roaches in the dining room of a restuarant I can only imagine what the kitchen looks like.

Maybe it’s because I work on helicopters where a shoddy fix means the undertaker but I tend to strive for the best the human race can do, not the shoddiest.