TOKYO Sony Corp. (6758.TO) said Friday it has found defects in some of its popular Cyber-shot digital cameras, the latest quality problem to strike the Japanese company whose image was severely tarnished by a massive battery recall earlier this year.

The electronics maker said in a statement that liquid crystal display screens of eight camera models might not display images correctly, saved images might be distorted or cameras might not take photos at all.

Sony has shipped a total of about 1 million units of the models in question, of which 0.4% had been reported to have been affected so far, a company spokesman said. Sony will fix for free cameras that show signs of the problems. He declined to comment on the cost that Sony may have to bear to address the problems, which only affect models sold in the domestic market.

The problems with the cameras put the spotlight back on Sony’s quality control. It is the latest in a series of quality-related setbacks for Sony, which recently appointed an executive to spearhead quality and safety management across the company, whose operations span production of consumer electronics like LCD televisions and computers to movies and entertainment.

Glitches in Sony-made lithium ion laptop batteries that it supplied to the world’s biggest computer makers forced it to recall up to 9.6 million battery packs, triggering huge costs that contributed to a 94% plunge in its net profit for the July-September quarter. Snowballing costs to develop and bring to market its PlayStation 3, whose European launch was delayed by problems Sony faced in producing a key component of the game machine in sufficient quantities, also weighed on its earnings in that quarter.

The troubles reflect the growing difficulty of maintaining quality amid the rising use of increasingly complicated electronic devices and shorter lead times for product development, said Kazuharu Miura, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research.

“This isn’t a problem only for Sony,” he said.

Other consumer electronics makers, and other manufacturers including automakers such as Toyota Motor Corp., will need to address this issue to maintain the quality of their products, he said.

As new technologies have been developed, Sony uses more devices that are equipped with computers. As a result, the company is now more vulnerable to problems with computer programs.

On top of this, Sony is forced to develop more advanced products in a shorter time period to react more quickly to consumer demand. This pressure to develop upgraded products in a limited timeframe raises the risk of errors and defects, Miura said.

Sony has shipped a total of about 1 million units of the models in question in Japan, of which 0.4% had been reported to have been affected so far, a spokesman said. The company has also sold the affected models overseas, but can’t say how many have been shipped or what proportion had been affected, the spokesman said.

Sony will fix for free cameras that show signs of the problems. He declined to comment on the cost that Sony may have to bear to address the problems.

(The item “=UPDATE:Sony Finds Defects In Some Of Its Digital Cameras” at 0735 GMT incorrectly stated that the defects only affected models sold in the domestic market.)