7D Main Dial Issues

My 7D ( I bought it in May?) is causing me some problems. Intermittently the Main Dial will become unresponsive. This prevents me from shooting in Manual mode, the auto modes still work because they don't rely on the Main Dial. Sometimes it will become responsive again after actuating the shutter, sometimes it requires a simple ON/OFF cycle. But there have been at least two times that nothing I did would fix it. Both of those times I turned the camera OFF and then sometime later (1-2 hours) turned it back ON to find that the Main Dial was working again. As you can imagine this is very frustrating. Has anyone else suffered from this??

Under warranty ?...send it in and have it checked out .

Mine is fine but you may have got one with a bad control , it happens .

I've never seen that problem, have you talked to Canon tech support about this problem yet? They may have a fix for that. Also, what version of firmware are you running in your camera?

The main dial is used by all modes.
The quick dial is used to set exposure compensation in automatic modes and aperture or shutter speed (configurable) in manual mode.
The quick dial can be disabled with a lock switch below it.
The main dial may become unresponsive if you have a battery grip and happened to place the main dial on the grip in a position between two click stops.

apersson850 wrote in post #11170460
The main dial may become unresponsive if you have a battery grip and happened to place the main dial on the grip in a position between two click stops.

That is some very interesting information! Is that from experience or is that documented somewhere?

My 7D is gripped with a Canon grip, but I am pretty sure that some of the occurrences were before I added the grip. But the more difficult occurrences have been since I added the grip.

Too bad I left it with the local camera shop to see if they could replicate the problem. I'll be down there tomorrow to try that myself!

Still, none of this ever happened with a Canon grip on my 20D and 40D.
Out of curiosity, where is the 7D grip manufactured?

+1 I've heard that when the input dial on the vertical grip is in between it's indents, it can disable the camera body main input dial.

You heard that in post #4 above, or elsewhere?
It doesn't matter, it's not a rumor. Anyone who has a grip can verify that for himself.

Now, I'm curious to try to reproduce the same issue on my 40D.
If it doesn't happen on the old grip, it means that they did screw up something in the new one.

apersson850 wrote in post #11174122
You heard that in post #4 above, or elsewhere?
It doesn't matter, it's not a rumor. Anyone who has a grip can verify that for himself.

Sorry didn't see that, I saw it in another post on the forum someone was having a problem with a third party grip, it looks like that's not the reason for the op's problem as he did not respond to it.

It happens on my 40D, at least. It happens on every gripped Canon I have, actually.

I just tried with my 40D. Basically, it is not possible to get the grip's dial stuck between the clicks unless you hold it there with your fingers. In that case, the main dial can become unresponsive. But it not possible to stop between the clicks otherwise, the springs are too strong.
So, it seems like a mechanical problem with the new grip.

I was able to reproduce the unresponsive main dial consistently by putting the grip dial in between clicks... it wasn't simple to get it there, but it would stay without any coercion once you got it in that position... at least now I have something to "check" when it happens again. thanks for everyone's help!