1DX shows black in preview

My 1DX in camera LCD shows black in preview after every shoots.

I inserted the CF card into computer, and the Raw & JPG preview also shows black.

What happened?
- It was fine for lots of pictures in the same CF card.
- But suddenly some shoots just only show black!

Try a different card would be my first suggestion. Are you getting all black images, or just some? It might be shutter failure, as well.

Is the entire frame completely black?

Oh, exalted gods of photography, please forgive your humble servant. Sometimes we must do what we must do.

Are you sure you took the lens cap off?

Hope you get it figured out, and that it is something simple (and cheap!).

I had a similar experience with my 1Dx about a week ago, was taking pictures and noticed banding getting progressively worse - then black. Tried swapping lens, CF cards, both slots, different batteries, modes, etc. A trip to CPS determined a new shutter and lever was in order. With CPS Gold discount repair bill is about $422. Still awaiting body's return and will post in the "Canon repair costs" when actual repair work order is received. I hope you don't have to get the same repair! Mine was 2+ years old with <21,000 on the shutter.

I thought they were guaranteed for 300,000/400,000 shutter actuations??

Joemt.

Joemt wrote in post #17890119
I thought they were guaranteed for 300,000/400,000 shutter actuations??

Joemt.

Thats MTBF. Mean time between failures. No relationship with waranty.

Put cam into manual on a slow exposure or bulb and take photo without a lens mounted and you should be able to see problem with shutter if that's what the problem is.

Joemt wrote in post #17890119
I thought they were guaranteed for 300,000/400,000 shutter actuations??

Shutter actuations don't necessarily stop postprocessing issues when the camera has to convert RAW to make the preview image to embed in the RAW file stored.
The reply about banding before it started with black preview is a clear indication of something downstream of shutter exposure of the sensor.

My suggestion to the OP is to put camera into JPG only mode, and see what is being processed and stored by the camera by looking at the JPG with a computer (or even your smartphone). Then put the camera into RAW+JPG, and see what the separate JPG files shows when the RAW preview is black.

Joemt wrote in post #17890119
I thought they were guaranteed for 300,000/400,000 shutter actuations??

Joemt.

The only "guarantee" you have is 12 months if under warranty and purchased new. There is nothing tied to shutter count at all.

Bassat wrote in post #17888732
Oh, exalted gods of photography, please forgive your humble servant. Sometimes we must do what we must do.

Are you sure you took the lens cap off?

Hope you get it figured out, and that it is something simple (and cheap!).

I was going to ask that in my first post, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

I'm going to assume you're shooting available light, and not dealing with something as obvious as strobes that can't recycle quickly enough to keep up with the 1DX framerate. That could easily give black frames, but of course it won't just be the preview images that are black in this case Faulty triggers could do the same.

I had a black preview image issue sometimes shooting sustained bursts of RAW on my 60D. Every once in a while, there would be a black preview, but the RAW file was always fine, and regenerating the preview in Lightroom fixed it. I assumed it was some unrecoverable bottleneck when writing out the burst to the card, where the processor had to skip a preview generation to keep up. It would not surprise me if memory card write speed was a factor in these occurrences. I've only seen it happen once so far on my 6D.