Bewildered newbie

[wintoid]

Hi all,

Great forum this. I've very much enjoyed looking at all your photographs, and reading your advice.

I'm now going to make a complete fool of myself. Please be gentle. I'm new to all this

After years of taking overexposed flash portrait photos with a G1, I've switched to an EOS300D with a 50mm lens, and I'm playing with the 1600 ISO setting and no flash, just to see how viable it is. 8) On occasions, I'm finding that the camera will just refuse to take a shot, and I don't understand why. I'm pressing the button, but there's no click. On those occasions, I've checked the possible causes I know about and found that:

a) There have been no images waiting to be written to the CF card (or at least the CF light doesn't flash when I remove my finger from the shutter)
b) The little circle in the viewfinder is steady, not flashing
c) Focus has been obtained and is perfect
d) The aperture and shutter speed settings are not anything special (e.g. f1.8 60)

So there, that's my embarassing problem. Camera not taking picture!

I'd very much appreciate any explanation anyone could thing of.

Many thanks,

Simon.

[maderito]

1/60, f1.8, and ISO 1600 would enable you to take pics in fairly low light. Thus I worry that you've got some of your settings wrong.

Try starting all over.

-Make sure your battery is charged.
-From the menu - select clear all settings.
-Set the camera mode to fully automatic (green zone).
-Start shooting (hopefully).

Good luck. :)

[Belmondo]

A guess.....
There isn't enough light for your autofucus. Try turning autofocus off (switch on the lens barrel) and focusing manuallly.

Tom

[Bruce Hamilton]

1/60, f1.8, and ISO 1600 would enable you to take pics in fairly low light.
And I suspect his digi-rebel is seeing too much light for his settings... I've noticed mine will do the same thing, too dark or too light, it simply won't shoot. I would suggest either backing that ISO down to around 800 or closing the lens down to around f4.5 or f5.6.

[wintoid]

Ah I should have mentioned I was using AV mode, and those were the settings the camera picked when I put the aperture on 1.8

Thanks all for your help!

[MediaMagic]

I get a similar problem on the 10D. Everything "looks" right, e.g., autofocus is indicated as attained and the green exposure indicator is attained, but the camera will not shoot when the shutter is fully pressed. The strange thing is that, if I continute to hold the shutter down fully pressed, the camera will take the shot after a 1 to 6 second delay which varies without a consistent pattern.

So the camera is obviously tweaking something after it indicates "ready to shoot". This occurs sometimes with flash, or normal light (not necessarily low or bright). I have not ascertained a pattern to specific curcumstances which cause it. My guess is that it is still tweaking the focus (though nothing appears to change in the viewfinder) as this weird delay condition does not occur in manual focus mode.

David

[-Bill-]

You didn't mention in your post what you do to get the camera working again.
I have had this happen, but to the best of my recollection, it had not achieved focus. It is as though it gave up trying. I just had to wait a few seconds and everything returned to normal.
It makes me think of when you are using a computer that is very busy with background tasks and it ignores you for a few seconds. All of a sudden, it seems to say "Oh, I'm sory, did you want something ?" and starts working again. It only happened in autofocus and in low light.

[-Bill-]

You didn't mention in your post what you do to get the camera working again.
I have had this happen, but to the best of my recollection, it had not achieved focus. It is as though it gave up trying. I just had to wait a few seconds and everything returned to normal.
It makes me think of when you are using a computer that is very busy with background tasks and it ignores you for a few seconds. All of a sudden, it seems to say "Oh, I'm sory, did you want something ?" and starts working again. It only happened in autofocus and in low light.

[robertwgross]

Humor me on this.

What drive mode was the camera in when this happened? (single, continuous, etc.)

When my D60 gets this way, I change the drive mode and the symptom goes away.

---Bob Gross---

[wintoid]

Well, I can't exactly say how it "comes back", as I haven't really worked out a pattern to it. Certainly if I back off and recompose the shot, it is often then able to take the picture. I've also had this business with the shot taking a little while after holding down the shutter button.

I'm not really a technical photographer. What matters to me is capturing the moment. I've missed a few moments now, and it's annoying. I almost prefer the hideously overexposed flash shots I was taking with my G1 to this. At least I wasn't missing the shot :( Having said that, the few good photos I've taken are stunning, to my very amateur eye at least.

I always use autofocus, and it's often in low light that this occurs. Having said that, I was outdoors this afternoon, and I could not take the shot in plain daylight. London skies at this time of year are murky and grey, but there was certainly enough light to shoot.

[PacAce]

Another thing that might be of interest in trying to "debug" this mystery is the firmware level that you're at. Maybe other people experiencing the same problem are at the same firmware level.

[wintoid]

I checked for firmware version and it's 1.1.1.

Concerning continuous or single drive mode, I couldn't find where to set that. Perhaps the EOS300D doesn't have such an option?

Anyway, sounds like I'm not completely alone in having this problem. At least it's not newbie finger trouble :)

[MediaMagic]

Well, believe it or not, I've seemingly traced the 10D problem I mentioned earlier to the BEEP feature. Have you toggled the BEEP off?

I normally have had the beep turned off because I prefer the silence. When on, I can't reproduce the delay scenario. Now, my first thought was, I must have been firing the camera *thinking* the focus was correct while the camera was still trying to focus. I repeated the test several times carefully. User error, while 99% of the time would be my case, is not the determining factor here. I made damn sure that the camera was properly exposed and focused (using the viewfinder indicators) before trying to fire the shutter. The beep feature toggle really does affect the strange delay.

With the beep feature turned off, the delay weirdness returned in AF mode, with the beep turned ON, I couldn't make it delay no matter how hard I tried.

I can't see how this could be coincidence as I took roughly 250 shots messing with it.

How very bizarre. There is obviously something going on behind the scene that I am missing.

[wintoid]

I have indeed turned off the beep. I'll turn it back on and see how it goes! Many thanks for this idea.

[PacAce]

I have indeed turned off the beep. I'll turn it back on and see how it goes! Many thanks for this idea.

You think maybe the wise guy who programmed the firmware was thinking to himself,"So, you think you can manage without the confirmation beep, eh? Well, let's see if you can guess when I think the camera should be ready. :twisted: "

:mrgreen:

[wintoid]

Hmm I've turned on the beep, and since then I haven't had the problem. I can't say for sure it's related but at the moment things seem fine.