Rebel T1i problem, please help :(

Ok so here is the problem. A friend of mine has a rebel T1i and he was out shooting the flood damage in western illinois this past weekend. He was up in a plane which his friend was flying, and was shooting with 55-250is and his 18-55is. While shooting, he accidentally hit the lens release button and the lens (55-250) came off. Luckily it only fell about 6 inches or so and he caught it. Well after shutting off the camera and putting the lens back on, his images now have a weird white area in the bottom left corner. He changed the lens over to the 18-55 and still the same problem. Below are some sample images. The first image was taken before the lens fell off, and the other two images were taken after. At first i thought it was a lens problem with the iris, but then he told me it was doing it with both lenses. I figured i would ask everyone here before i tell him to send it away to canon. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Mike

so there is no visible damage to the camera? from the pictures i could guess for light leakage...

I don't quite believe your friends story. Perhaps that's what he thinks happened. If you press the lens release button, nothing happens unless you also twist it clockwise (from photographer's perspective holding the camera) at the same time. You need to turn the lens a full 1/8th of a turn for it to come off. It is very difficult to do by accident. I suppose it is possible if he did it and then didn't notice and tried to zoom out I suppose he could have turned the lens instead of the zoom ring if it was stiff.

At any rate, it looks like shutter damage, nothing to do with taking a lens off. Tell him to do a manual clean and look at the sensor to see if parts of the shutter are covering the sensor or if he can see the whole sensor. Only other thing I can think of is he somehow took some shots with the lens partly off and the mirror smacked into the back of the lens and the mirror mechanism is now broken. Have him take the lens off and take some shots on bulb to see if the mirror comes all the way up, stays up and goes back down properly and see if the shutter is working. If he has another camera then pictures of the shutter and mirror would help diagnose it.

At any rate I believe it needs a trip back to Canon if it happens with both his lenses.

Looks like a shutter problem to me

philwillmedia wrote in post #10620696
Looks like a shutter problem to me

Yup, he better send that back to Canon, he damaged the shutter!

thanks everyone. after i posted this, he did say that he checked the shutter and one of the leaves (not sure if thats the right terminology) was missing. i told him that a trip to canon was pretty much his only option now. thanks again.