7d CF Card wont go in all the way

Hello,I tried searching the forums without much luck.Ive looked at both the cf card and the pins at the bottom.Yes im inserting the right way.Since label backwards wont even go down very far.Ive tried 2 new cards.I looked very closely at the all the pins on the card and inside the card slot.Nothing is bent.The card itself will get almost down to locked in position but it wont lock.The release button on the right works fine.

I usually use usb to off load but I needed a larger card.This is the first time this has happened.Nothing visble that looks bent or offline is at the bottom.

Im really scared im going to spent what ive read as a $350 repair from canon.But nothing looks bent or missing.Im at a total loss.Im not about to try this myself.

Any and all help would be nice.
Thanks

There is (quite normally) a point of increased resistance that is reached a few millimetres before the card reaches the end of its travel, at which point the little gray button pops up, so perhaps you're just not pressing hard enough to overcome that last step. Try a little harder.

If it's still impossible, then it must be something physical such as a bent pin in the card slot inside, or a foreign body you can't see blocking the card from being pushed all the way home. You could try vaccuuming the card slot.

Could you post a photo of the card at the point it stops?

Well I got the bad news from Canon.Im looking at $229 to fix a bend CF pin.Thats kinda of window shock.But from where I live all the camera shops gave me the send it to canon thing.I looked very closely at all the pins.they all appeared to be straight.But in this case something was bent.So cf cards need to be inserted with the upmost care.Which i thought i did.So be careful when putting these cards in an out.Im just crying over spilled milk.

Buy a big CF card ,use a USB cable to upload pics.Insert it label out to you with the arrow pointing down-facing you(which i did).Just passing this to help out other people.Slow an easy when it comes to cards.BTW SD cards aren't nearly this sensitive.Ive never had an issue with them.Ok thanks and learn from my life lesson.
Peace

There are CF cards with different thickness. When you use the thinner cards, there's quite a bit of play in the guide rail. Thus you must make sure you are aligned correctly manually, since there's room for the card to be at the wrong side.

apersson850 wrote in post #16068841
There are CF cards with different thickness. When you use the thinner cards, there's quite a bit of play in the guide rail. Thus you must make sure you are aligned correctly manually, since there's room for the card to be at the wrong side.

There shouldn't be any CF with different thickness resulting in play.

Yes, you can find three different thickness variants of the cards - but that relates to how wide slot they need. But the guiding rail is the same so there should be zero play. Just that you could design a computer that could either accept two thin cards at the same time, or one thick card consuming both slots.

So if you have managed to find a card with play, then that card is mechanically incorrect.

The biggest issue with CF (assuming that the guild rails are correctly dimensioned) is that people should store the cards in boxes to avoid one of the holes getting plugged by debris. A plugged hole can very easily lead to a bent pin, since the user expects a bit of extra resistance the last part of the insert.

All Sandisk cards I have can wobble a bit, when you insert them into the guide rail in my 7D cameras. I doubt both cameras and all cards are defective.
You have to be a bit sensitive to "proper" resistance, when pushing the card into the camera's card reader.

I have used jewelers screwdrivers to straighten a bent pin in the past. I would try to straighten it myself before sending it off. Patience while slowly bending the pin back into a straight configuration saved me a repair bill.

I have three Transcend cards, which all wobble very slightly until they reach the stop and then they become firm when you push them home.

I did once have a corner break off an SDHC card whilst it was in my 450D. The card came out easily, but I had to fiddle about with a small screwdriver to remove the broken bit from the camera. I dumped that card and the others went in fine.

If you do decide to have a poke with a screwdriver, I would suggest removing the battery from the camera first.

There is a very good thread with pictures on the bent pin issue at http://www.tomguilmett​e.com/archives/445. It is critical that CF cards be properly stored because as pwm2 had stated, debris can get into a hole and present excessive resistance when inserting the card. Check the "female" pin insertion area on the cards every time they are removed. If you see any damage to a pin hole, then consider trashing the card. I realize they are expensive but so is a camera repair. There are 50 pins total in two rows in a linear width of roughly 1.6 inches, to properly check the "cavity" in the camera body, you need a very bright flashlight.

If you use a card reader occasionally check the pins in the reader as well. There has been at least one case here of an individual that had a damaged reader which damaged the card which ultimately damaged the camera.

Personally I don't have a camera that uses CF cards but when I did I always used a cable transfer of images. I had previous experience of a card being damaged in a PCMCIA to CF adapter and just never liked that those pins in a camera are at the bottom of a 1-1/2 inch hole.

The pins don't bother me, out of countless bodies, I have had issues with just one, and that was from the prior owner. If you make sure the card simply drops down loosely into the card slot, and you can push it that final tiny bit, you should be okay. Definitely need to look at the card holes too, and it is worthwhile getting the plastic storage cases for the cards.

Also, just because you have a bent pin, it doesn't mean your camera is not usable. A subset of those 50 pins are actually used, so if a pin bends, it may be a pin that serves no purpose. I don't have a pinout of the reader in the camera to know which those are though.

There is also another trick that many here would "poo-poo", but if pins break off, you can put a "proxy pin" into your CF so that a very small bit of it sticks out, and when you put the card in, it will make contact with the old pin's base, completing the circuit. Of course, that means that card is now "permanently" relegated to that body unless you can get the pin back out later.

I would only do this with really old Canon DSLRs where you cannot get anything out of them, and it isn't worth spending any money repairing, and you didn't want to tear the camera apart.

EDIT: also regarding the SD vs CF, it seems that Canon was kind enough to put UDMA support on the CF slot of the 5d3 (like on the 7D), but put standard 133x speeds on the SD card slot. So even if I wanted to use high speed SD cards, it won't really matter, it would be a waste of money. Also if I have both CF and SD cards in, then the writes to the CF card will slow down too, because everything slows to the 133x speed of the SD card.

TeamSpeed wrote in post #16069026
I have used jewelers screwdrivers to straighten a bent pin in the past. I would try to straighten it myself before sending it off. Patience while slowly bending the pin back into a straight configuration saved me a repair bill.

A much better solution is to use a push-type mechanical pencil that takes lead mines. Some of these pencils ends with a fixed tube (some have a front tube that can be pusehd in as you write and the mine gets shorter) that is absolutely excellent for the task. If I remember correctly, a 0.5mm pencil should work

Reddog, sorry you had a bent pin problem. A lot of the time when we hear of those, it seems to be with inexpensive, "no-name" memory cards.

I change CF cards all the time... sometimes a dozen or more swaps a day. And I've been doing that for going on ten years. Never had a bent pin problem. But I use relatively high quality cards... Sandisk, Lexar, and a few Sony.

Cards are designed so that you can't insert them backwards or upside down. You'd really have to force it.

Sorry, but just I don't buy your (and John's) solution.... One big card that's never removed and a USB cable to download. There are a number of problems with that, too.

1. I couldn't buy a single card that's large enough. Some days I'll take upwards of 2000 RAW images with two cameras. The most I can recall was close to 5000 images, more than 200GB worth before editing.

2. I definitely don't want to put all my eggs in one basket. If a card fails or is lost, I'd rather it be a smaller card with only a portion of the day's shoot on it. Most of the cards I use are good for 250-300 RAW files each. So if a card ever failed or got lost or corrupted somehow, I'd lose no more than 10 or 15% of the day's work. Knock on wood, I've never lost a card. But I know other folks who have.

3. USB cable downloads are slow.

4. USB cable downloads rely upon the camera's batteries being charged up enough to finish the download, unless you also get an AC power supply kit for the camera and use it.

5. USB cable downloads can fail or be corrupted due to connectivity issues, a failed USB port or a failed USB cable. Both the ports and cables can and do wear out with extensive use and they fail a lot more often than memory cards and card readers.

6. To me the images on the card are the most important thing. The camera and memory cards are just tools in the process of getting those images and they do wear and get damaged over time. The sale of one image might easily pay for a $229 repair.

I'm sure I've swapped memory cards many thousands of times now. For almost four years, much of my work has been with a pair of 7Ds and fourteen memory cards I use in them, that have taken close to 200,000 images total... so something like 300+ card swaps per camera in that time.

I've screwed up with a memory card exactly once... pulling a card out too fast, while the camera was still writing to it, and corrupting about 1/3 of the images on it (that was an older camera that was slower writing, there's little risk of this occuring with recent camera models that write a lot faster). No harm done to the camera. No permanent harm to the memory card, either.... just corrupted some of the images on it.

I did have trouble with image transfers via a card reader once, too... a few images out of a large batch were corrupted. Figured out it was a bad USB hub and re-connected the card reader directly to the computer. No more hubs! Problem solved.

I now use a desktop that's got a built-in card reader (eSata connected, I think) and an Expresscard reader with my laptop. Both of these are far faster transfering than USB. The Expresscard is a cheap one and a little fiddly to align the card, but I'm careful and it works. I only use it when I absolutely must, on location.

I do use the USB cable, too... but only to set up and sync my cameras, and occasionally for tethered shooting. Not for downloading images.

Oh, and the reason it costs $229 for Canon to fix the bent pin is because they don't straighten it, they replace the entire CF socket and have to pretty extensively disassemble the camera to do that.

If I were you, I would very carefully inspect the memory card I was using when the pin got bent... I wouldn't be surprised if there were a fault with or an obstruction in one of the pin holes of the memory card.

In your situation, Alan, I agree. It's the right way to work, and it's the only way.
Taking pictures just for fun, I'm in the situation that I can often upload the images to my computer whenever I like, so no problem with battery charging, the time it takes or anything. It's just more convenient for the to just plug in the cable and press "Download" on the computer's screen, in the window which opens automatically.
But I'm not in a hurry and I rarely fill a card in one day's worth of shooting. So our circumstances are widely different.

amfoto1 wrote in post #16070058
Oh, and the reason it costs $229 for Canon to fix the bent pin is because they don't straighten it, they replace the entire CF socket and have to pretty extensively disassemble the camera to do that.

depending on the camera, it's not just the socket they replace (very few have a detacheable CF socket) Most are part of the main circuitboard...

just reading your "not-wanting-all-eggs-in-one-basket" above, I wonder if you've got a case for having a camera with dual-slots and writing to both cards.

Wow thanks everyone for your advice.I got really scared since this body cost me $1300 or so dollars.I really couldn't tell that a inboard pin was bent but at age 43 my eyes aren't always the best.LOL.FYI I was using a Transcend 64gb card.Never had a issue until last week.

Things happen as they say.Im going to buy a pair of jewelers screwdrivers just in case(thxs teamspeed good idea).

Just checking out everyones thoughts ,after taking a session do you remove and use a fast card reader or use usb?Coming from sd cards Ive never had even the hint of a problem in 4 years.But I was told from repair shops ect that the cf card causes a lot of issues.I guess it comes down to a few things-Card -camera and the idiot putting the card in.(me in this case)

Thanks for all you replys and thoughts.I have learned a costly mistake I guess on my part.peace