!! Please Help !! - 1d MkIII Battery Check Meter issues

I am at wits end with this and i've spent the last few hours looking on the forums for an answer and I cannot seem to find the answer so I am resorting to asking as I feel out of options.

I have a 1d MkIII and I have a Canon OE Charger and two OE Batteries. One of them is about 3 years old, and one is less than a year old. They have been working fine until recently.

I will charge both batteries full and have checked their performance by pushing the calibrate button and I get all 3 lights indicating the charging performance is just fine. I then can take either battery and use it for about 40 - 60 shots or so and then the battery check meter just shows an outlined battery with no bars in the middle, indicating that it is depleted.

I can check it in the menu and it says "cannot communicate with battery" and it still continues to work. If I pull the battery and re-seat it, the battery comes back and I can see that it is at 97% and 69 pictures taken.

It just seems odd, but my camera has never malfunctioned, failed, or had any issues.

Has anyone seen this before or knows what to do??? My firmware is 1.2.5


Any help is greatly appreciated. The only thing I havent tried to change is the internal CR2025 battery.


hopefully somebody out there can help me!!!

thanks in advance!

Are you "Calibrating" your batteries when suggested or are you doing it kinda when you feel like it?

There's no need to hit the calibrate button unless your body says so. Just put the batter in the charger and leave it until it's three green.

Calibration completely (or very nearly so) discharges the battery before charging...

I have not calibrated it unless it has told me to. I just pushed that button as it stated in the manual to check if the charging is up to snuff...or if the battery has diminished charging capabilities.....

I'm just wondering if maybe I need to send it in or if its just a fluke. Like I said I will shoot and shoot and it will say 95% or something and then it says its nothing and cannot communicate with the battery. All i do after that is re-seat the battery and then I get my stats back. Its just really odd...

I also put my batteries on the charger when it showed that it couldn't communicate with the batteries and it says they are almost full as it lights up the first two lights and blinks on the third.....

thanks again to anyone who can help!!

Well yes. I'm quite familiar with the problem. My 7d was sitting on a tripod and had powered itself off. It wouldn't wake up and I thought the battery was just low-low. I put a fresh battery in and I got the same message (Battery charge indicator wouldn't show anything either). I tried the original battery and got the same message. Oh, I had to change the date the time after every battery swap also. I did a Google search and found a few recommendations, replace the clock battery, re-install the latest firmware let the batteries charge overnight, clean the contacts with a pencil eraser among others. I even emailed Canon. Their suggestion was to sent the camera in for repair.
While I was attending a Canon Live Learning Seminar I was changing some items in the menu and custom controls, nothing that had anything to do with batteries. I then noticed the battery charge indicator mysteriously started working (I know that part may not be of much value to you). The day/date still had to be changed with every battery swap. I was talking to a Canon rep and he suggested doing a hard reset. This consisted of removing the battery, card(s) and lens for 10 minutes. That cured the clock problem. I know this was kinda long, but I wanted to give you some ideas that I had run across. I know how frustrating this problem is. Please let us know if and when this goes away and maybe what finally fixed it.

Tony

So dumb...rookie mistake of overlooking.......

As of tonight, I pulled the battery, lens, and internal battery CR2025. After installing a new 2025 and testing, it appears to be just fine. To me, it seems as if the problem was an old CR2025. (This camera is 2 years old to me and almost 2 years old to the previous owner.)

Never would have thought, but it makes sense now.....

moral of the story so far...it appears to have been the internal CR2025 battery....

thanks for those that replied...

-simon

Glad it's all better now.

cambodian wrote in post #13988375
So dumb...rookie mistake of overlooking.......

As of tonight, I pulled the battery, lens, and internal battery CR2025. After installing a new 2025 and testing, it appears to be just fine. To me, it seems as if the problem was an old CR2025. (This camera is 2 years old to me and almost 2 years old to the previous owner.)

Never would have thought, but it makes sense now.....

moral of the story so far...it appears to have been the internal CR2025 battery....

thanks for those that replied...

-simon

Thanks! I learned something.

not to start a hijack but I have a quick question on the internal battery before I ship my MD3 to Canon today (its sitting on my desk ready to go). My problem is different than yours in that everything has always worked fine until yesterday when the camera little had no flicker of life regardless of what I tried. I pulled the internal battery, waited about a minute, reinstalled and still nothing. Now you have me thinking that I should replace that with a fresh 2025 before I send it in. Is it possible that the 2025 clock battery could cause the whole system to shut down and not power back up?

namasste - hey another Ohioan! I'm from NW Ohio......


As to your issues above...I have no idea but its worth a shot! make sure you use a nice quality precision screwdrivers as I almost ruined the screw by using a cheap "tech-screwdriver"

also after testing it for a while last night and over 100 shots, the battery did not drain nor did it have the symptoms i have been experiencing. I am begining to think a 4 dollar fix is what corrected my problem!