Camera Lockup Experiences?

[Cecil Walker]

While shooting photos at a road racing event on Sunday, my camera locked up. I'm looking to see if anyone has any info or if this is a known problem.

I was using my D30, a battery grip with two freshly charged batteries and a 70-200L lens and a 1GB microdrive. Camera setting was Tv, AI Servo, all three focus points, multi-shot drive mode.

I was shooting in bursts, like 2 shots then 3 shots, etc. All of a sudden there was a huge spinout right in front of me. I swung the camera around and pressed the shutter only to see it was BUSY and wouldn't fire. I pressed the shutter again... nothing. So I held the button down figuring that as soon as the buffer cleared it would start firing.

BUSY never went away! No matter what I did, it just kept blinking BUSY. I walked all the way back to the RV of the race team I was shooting and it never stopped blinking BUSY. I tried pressing buttons to see if it would stop. When I pressed the button to view the last shot taken, the mode suddenly changed. It stopped blinking BUSY, and the only thing displayed on the external display was the shots remaining, the battery indicator, and a full set of dashes along the bottom.

Nothing I did would change this mode. Even turning off the power would not reset it. It wouldn't even power off! Nothing worked until I physically removed the two batteries. When I put them back in and powered in on, everything was working fine.

Any ideas on what happened?

Thanks,
Cecil

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Cecil,

A couple of things occur to me, but I can't remember the precise symptoms to know that this is your problem.

1. Have you upgraded the firmware to the latest version? This is now 1.02.2. There were some power issues that were fixed by one of the upgrades. If you are still using 1.0, you can get the latest version from the D30 forum on Fred Miranda's site (http://www.fredmiranda.com). For some reason, Canon haven't posted it yet.

2. WRT the battery grip, I recall an issue with the camera locking if the second control wheel was stuck between positions. I just tried to duplicate this with mine and the wheel wouldn't stop in between positions. :eyes

Regards,

Roger
www.rogercavanagh.com

[Cecil Walker]

Roger_Cavanagh wrote:
Cecil,

A couple of things occur to me, but I can't remember the precise symptoms to know that this is your problem.

1. Have you upgraded the firmware to the latest version? This is now 1.02.2. There were some power issues that were fixed by one of the upgrades. If you are still using 1.0, you can get the latest version from the D30 forum on Fred Miranda's site]. For some reason, Canon haven't posted it yet.

2. WRT the battery grip, I recall an issue with the camera locking if the second control wheel was stuck between positions. I just tried to duplicate this with mine and the wheel wouldn't stop in between positions. :eyes

Regards,

Roger
[url]www.rogercavanagh.com (http://www.fredmiranda.com)

Thanks Roger! I try and duplicate the grip wheel theory tonight.

I just got the camera mid-December so I'm guessing it's the version prior to 1.02.2 and I WAS reluctant to upgrade if I wasn't experiencing any problems as the camera WAS operating flawlessly and I loved the images it was producing.

I'll take a look at that too!

Cheers,
Cecil

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Cecil,

I just checked the power issue was fixed in 1.01, but you can tell what version by looking at the EXIF data in BreezeBrowser.

It's a snap to upgrade. Just follow the instructions. I have done 3 now with no probs (fingers crossed).

I fixed the mistyped link to Fred's site.

Cheers,

Roger