7d failure

My 7 d. Purchased June 2010. Has died totally dead. Checked batteries,lense pins etc. canon won't fix under warranty as it is outside the 12 month period. Any ideas to fix this problem ? Also looking to see if this is a known problem. Cheers. Bill

any pre-warnings before its death?

Are you 100% sure on the warranty side of things? I would contact your trading standards group (ie the government body that regulates trade in Oz) and enquire since there are often subtle parts of the Warranty that are not always shouted about - and a failed unit even just outside of the warranty might still be legitimately covered under a specific clause.

Also did you check both the camera batteries and the internal memory battery? (the small round silver one). In addition if you use a battery grip did you try removing and using just one battery in the camera itself - sometimes grips do need re-seating (ie remove and replace) to cure a small contact miss-connection.

And if all else fails, if you bought it with a CC, Most carriers include a complementary extended year of coverage on all items purchased on that card. Call the company and explain the situation, Friend had his Nikon fail on him (has a 60D now haha) and american Express sent him the $ for replacement without asking for the niko back as was quoted " that happens all the time to those cameras"

Overread wrote in post #13416481
Are you 100% sure on the warranty side of things? I would contact your trading standards group (ie the government body that regulates trade in Oz) and enquire since there are often subtle parts of the Warranty that are not always shouted about - and a failed unit even just outside of the warranty might still be legitimately covered under a specific clause.

Yup. You have legal rights totally separate from the manufacturer's warranty. Tell the company that you bought the camera from that you consider a total failure after less than 18 months indicates that the camera is 'not fit for purpose'. Check out the ACCC and the Queensland Office of Fair Trading.

Thank you for your responses. Having checked the above suggestions,with no improvement, I am now checking further Hollis link which I think will be of a possative move,tried to tell teck support this yesterday,but being an offshore service,wasnt sucscessfull. Cheers

if its totally dead, I would blame it on the DC-DC Power board..fuse must have blown

I have a Benjamin' ( that's real green money ) and offer to pay shipping for the dead 7D.

Sorry to read about the problem...especially since I just bought a new 7D 2 weeks ago.

mc41 wrote in post #13416314
My 7 d. Purchased June 2010. Has died totally dead. Checked batteries,lense pins etc. canon won't fix under warranty as it is outside the 12 month period. Any ideas to fix this problem ? Also looking to see if this is a known problem. Cheers. Bill

Did you get a quote from Canon on how much the repair will cost?

Why don't you call canon, send them the camera, and get a quote on the repair first?

If the camera is just plain dead, won't power up at all, no ERR messages, no flickering LEDs... nothing. There are a number of things you can do yourself, process of elimination, to troubleshoot the camera. Before sending the camera in, I'd want to try to rule out the simplest and most likely possibilities:

First thing I'd do is get a second, known good set of batteries and a known good charger, borrow from a friend or the local camera store... and see if it really is dead. An electronic shop also can use a mutli-meter to check your current battery, to see if it's getting charged or not.

Has the camera set for a long time unused? I had some batteries go fully flat and need several recharge cycles in Canon chargers before they held sufficient charge to power up a camera. They appeared charged... the charger flashed properly during charging and signaled properly that they were fully charged... but they weren't. Repeated the process a few times and got them to come back to life. Now, in that case the camera would power up very briefly, then show the battery low, then die completely. And those were older Nicad, not the lithium LP-E6 that your camera uses. So, this is merely a remote possibility.

Next, as already suggested, do you have a grip on the camera? If so, remove it and check the contacts are clean. Wipe the grip-to-camera and battery-to-grip contacts with a clean cloth, slightly dampened with isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol.

Also check the battery door of the grip, there's a micsro-switch in the upper righthand corner that powers down the camera off when the door is opened. If something were obstructing that micro-switch, or the tab on the door that presses on the switch were broken off, that can prevent the camera from powering up.

Alternatively, try a different, known-good grip on the camera.

If not using a grip, there's a similar micro-switch on the battery cover on the bottom of the camera. Look for a slot near the edge and a corresponding tab on the battery cover, that fits into that small slot to trip the micro-switch. (I use a grip on both my 7D, and notice there is a tab on the top of the grip, too, that fits into the rectangular slot and trips the micro-switch.)

There is another micro-switch on the memory card slot cover/door. You can see it near the top of the card, a small metal tab that sticks up, and a corresponding plastic tab on the inside of the slot cover/door. Also check it.

Inspect those switches with a flashlight and a magnifying glass, for any obstructions. You can use a toothpick or similar to operate those switches, one at a time.

Any of these, if stuck or obstructed or damaged in any way, might prevent the camera from powering up.

I suppose those micro-switches also might fail, need to be replaced. But they are pretty simple and that's probably less likely.

The next thing I'd suspect is the off/on switch itself. I usually just leave it on and let my cameras go into sleep mode... But perhaps that switch has gotten damaged or worn with repeated use, or perhaps it's gotten corrosion, due to lack of use. If you haven't already done so, operate it a few times, those types of switches are often self cleaning.

I'd also try a completely different, known good lens... Such as one of a friend's camera or a display camera at a camera shop. However, the camera should power up without any lens on it at all. So this is unlikely to be a problem area.

Next - probably won't help, the camera should work fine without it, although the date & time won't stay set - but the little silver memory battery is cheap and easy to replace.

Hope that one of these works and it's something simple.

If they don't, you might take it to a local camera repair tech since it's out of warranty anyway... but there will usually be a nominal charge just for looking at it and identifying the problem. Or send it to Canon and they'll troubleshoot, then let you know the cost of repair. Sometimes you get lucky, they check the shutter count and find it's low, it's something simple or they are just in a good mood, and they don''t charge you very much or at all... just shipping to and from their facility. Be prepared, though.. there is likely to be a cost beyond shipping. No idea what's wrong, so it's impossible to say what that cost might be. Could be a blown fuse, as someone mentioned, that might be cheap to fix... or it might be a failed electronic component that's costlier. You really won't know without sending the camera in.

I've been using a pair of 7D for a couple years now, without any problems (knock on wood). I don't know of any sort common issue, sorry to say (most 7D "issues" seem to be with focus, and I'd wager a high percentage of those aren't the fault of the camera). There hasn't been a 7D recall, such as the mirror issue with the original 5D models.

Excellent advice from Amfoto1.
I had my 7D failed on me during a shoot. Turn out battery contacts got dirty, a few minutes clean up with alcohol fixed the problem.

I'm having the same issues with my 7D but I think it's turning out to be related to the charger. Like previously suggested check the batteries out with a volt meter, try totally different charger and battery combination. The issue with mine is that the batteries are telling the chargers that they are full when they actually don't have almost no charge.

I'd do some of the home fixes for things like checking batteries and such. Otherwise, (I'm assuming Aussie is similar to NZ) take it back to the STORE (not Canon) where you bought it and say it has failed and it has not lasted a reasonable amount of time (I still have a 30D going strong after all these years) and its their responsibility to fix or replace it.