1Ds II Lockup Mystery Solved

[Keith_Flood]

I have been dealing with this issue for over 6 months and have finally figured out what was causing my problem. It took so long to figure out because of the intermitant nature and the fact that my problem had similar symptons to other known causes of lockups and strange shutter noises. My problem had also gotten progressivly worse which helped to finally make a diagnoses.

Since I got my body back 2 weeks ago I have been using it exclusively and started to have the half shutter release noise with no image recorded symptom. Also, the buttons would quit working and pushing the shutter half way down did nothing, no metering and no autofocus. I handed the camera to A friend and fellow photographer who noticed that when he touched the power switch, the camera would flicker to life and start working again. I then noticed that if I got my finger nail under the little lever the power switch I could get the camera to turn off with very little pressure, even though the camera was in the on position.

So it appears there is a short/bad connection in the main power switch. Seems so simple now but with this problem, no error code is ever created for the Canon Techs to download and troubleshoot. In addition, just putting ever so slight inward pressure on the switch makes the problem go away for a time. So just handling the camera while trying to trouble shoot it would make the problem disapear. Hopefully this will help someone else that experiences this problem and will save them some time and grief.

Cheers and Happy Holidays to all you Rob Galbraith members!

Keith

[DJ_Garcia]

All's well that ends well. Believe me, you're not the first to fall victim to some bizarro anomally / malfunction. The good thing is, you found it.

It's a holiday present - Happy Holidays!

DJ

[RonDawes]

Speaking of bizzare behavior, for several events one of my 1Ds would fire the 550 flash at random times. It drove me nuts. I checked and polished the flash contacts, the hot shoe contacts, changed batteries, all the normal stuff. Nothing mattered. Some events it would perform flawlessly, at others the flash would fire when I moved the camera or brought it up to my eye. Nothing made sense. Then I happend to look at the FEL button for the vertical hand grip. My hand strap passed across it and I had the switch that enables the vertical grip controls set to ON. I set the switch to OFF and the gremlin was gone for good. When I flexed the hand strap, it would trip the vertical FEL button at random times. Boy did I feel DUMB for that one.

[NillToulme]

Huh. Well, I guess that's yet another argument for attaching the right end of the strap to the bottom of the camera instead of the top.

Nill
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www.toulme.net