Refurbished 7D with old firmware

I just received a refurbished 7D from Canon. Getting pumped up over it, watching videos about the complex AF system (God, I miss the old eye control on the EOS3).
I just discovered it has Firmware version 1.2.5 on it. To me that means "refurbishing" meant nothing. I would expect anyone working on the camera would have made sure that it had the latest firmware operating system. Is this an incorrect assumption?

Canon has a 14 day replacement on Refurbished bodies, I'm asking for a different one.

And no guarantee that the new one will have the current firmware. Keep the camera and update the firmware.

But if they haven't upgraded the firmware, have they even looked at the camera during the "refurbishing" process or are they just reshipping a defective camera that was returned by someone else?
Isn't updating the body part of the process?

Most of the time refurbished means a store return. They do a clean & inspect then repack.

You find that is the case with 99% of the electronics out there. I recently did a hot swap repair on a tablet, which means they sent me a refurb and I sent my old one back in the same box. The table had the previous version of the OS on it. Spent 5 minutes doing an update, no big deal.

Save yourself a headache, just update it.

What if it was refurbished prior to the update.

OK, I'll update it and try some shots.

crn3371 wrote in post #15108628
What if it was refurbished prior to the update.

That's a very valid point, I doubt they would revisit inventory to ensure firmware is updated on all their stock.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a brand new 7D with old firmware on it either as there are many stops in the distribution chain between Canon and the end user.

Yep. I bought a new 7D about a month ago, and it had the old firmware on it. The chain I purchased it from had a large sale moving a fair number of units, and it is very likely mine was recently in from Canon. (Actually mine had to be shipped, and it was delayed due to restocking issues.)

^ And there you go...

When I used to work in IT, our company was an HP reseller and one value-added service we offered was pre-loading our customers' images so they could plug the machines into their network and be up and running once they were unboxed. As part of that process we would also perform any BIOS (firmware) updates that were necessary.

I bought my 7D recently, new, and it had the old firmware.

Wouldn't really surprise me if there is a fairly large back log of new cameras that rolled out of production prior to the release of the new firmware. Also wouldn't surprise me if production never updated to the new firm ware to save rebuilding Quality Control protocols to deal with it. (Or at the very least it was greatly delayed hitting production to allow more testing. Always kind of awkward to find out you've bricked a product due to a change after you've pushed 10,000+ units out the warehouse door.)

There is also the issue of updating the manual.

I bought mine new in March and I am still using the old firmware. It works so well, I am terrified of screwing something up with the update.

Fuce wrote in post #15109216
I bought mine new in March and I am still using the old firmware. It works so well, I am terrified of screwing something up with the update.

there are some great new features in the latest firmware your missing out on, updating firmware is easy.

1) make sure you have a full charged battery loaded (this is important)

2) download the software from the site, select your operating system, go to the menu "firmware", click on the link and download "EOS 7D Firmware Version 2.0.3" [Windows]
http://www.usa.canon.c​om …eos_7d#DriversA​ndSoftware

3) the download is a compressed folder called "eos7d-v203-win"

4) if you open the folder you'll see the file "7D000203.FIR" just copy this to your CF card at the highest directly level (root directory)

5) pop the card into the camera and then navigate "3rd spanner menu" select "Firmware Ver.x.x.x" and it will recognise the new firmware file and ask you to install it.

QED

If you found a dealer witha 1-year old camera, never opened but on the shelf and got it home you might find old firmware and old software on the included CD. Do you think you have a right to return the product?