300D focus & exposure problem

Hello, I'm new to this forum and am hoping someone can help me out here. As you can see my passion is Skydiving and photography. I'm shooting with a 300D and have recently run into some problems. I've been using this camera and same settings for over a year now and had this happen once last year.

Has anyone experienced a problem like this or have any idea what might be going on here?

This past weekend I had this happen on 3 skydives, 2 were back to back on Saturday and it happened again on the following day on 1 out of 8 skydives.

All of the images are totally out of focus and the exposure appears to be stuck on F3.5.

I've attached 2 images and the camera data is below. Additionally I've posted an example of my normal results with the same settings.

Any thoughts or ideas or help would be appreciated.

Pat

Camera Data:

File Name
IMG_6781.JPG
Camera Model
Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
Shooting Date/Time
8/27/2005 10:32:39 AM
Shooting Mode
Shutter-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed )
1/500
Av( Aperture Value )
3.5
Metering Mode
Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation
0
ISO Speed
200
Lens
18.0 - 55.0mm
Focal Length
22.0mm
Image Size
3072x2048
Image Quality
Fine
Flash
On
Flash Type
External E-TTL
Flash Exposure Compensation
-2/3
Red-eye Reduction
Off
Shutter curtain sync
1st-curtain sync
White Balance Mode
Auto
AF Mode
AI Focus AF
Parameters Settings
Contrast Mid. High
Sharpness Mid. High
Color saturation Mid. High
Color tone 0
Color Space
sRGB
File Size
1046KB
Drive Mode
Continuous shooting
Camera Body No.
1060310189

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Evaluative metering... flash... directly into the sunlight?
Perhaps you focussed on them and since you're travelling at several hundred feet per minute, perhaps they changed range from your camera and went out of focus.

If you half press, then recompose (or delay) if your subject changes distance from the camera you'll get blurry pics.... for sure.

Perhaps you should use a tripod!

I'm not facing the sun, it's behind my back, the flash is for fill and my head is the tripod . The camera is acutally mounted to a helmet along with my video camera and flash. THe focus mode is in continous by the way using the remote release.

I can see the focus sticking but don't have a clue what would cause the aperature to stay at 3.5 for 20 shots or so especially consdiering that I don't have the shutter release pressed the whole time. I take some shots, wait, take some more etc.

Why do you think the exposure's stuck? It's on Tv mode, F3.5 is probably just the right aperture given the light that's around. It just looks out of focus to me, like the AF didn't lock onto the correct thing, which isn't unreasonable if it happens occasionally in those rather challenging circumstances.

Did you somehow get the lens stuck on MF?
If your flash is on the shoe, I've had some problems with mine sometimes when my head presses against it. It must break one (or more) of the 5 point connections or something.

The results are 1 of 2 situations... the flash fires full every time which causes major overexposure and slow recharge for the next shot... or there's no flash at all which (unless you're using CF3 I think) your image is blurry because the speed is slow since there's no flash.

How high are you jumping from? Maybe the pressure is affecting it somehow every 8th jump.

What do you mean by "focus sticking?" How can you see it if it's attached to your helmet?

The aperture was definately stuck or locked at F3.5 on every shot in each of these 3 instances. It was a brihgt blue sky day on ISO200 at 1/500th of a second, the flash is not mounted directly onthe camera, I'm using Canon's off-shoe cord, the flash the 550EX is set to high speed sync also so when the flash isisn't firing the shutter stays a 1/500th. Typically the apeture should have been or would be somewhere between F8 & 11. The sun is at my back and there really isn't anything in the sky or background that would normally fool the metering system.

The lens definatlely was not on MF & the autofocus has really worked prett well, it's really not all that challenging for the most part.

Imagine that every frame (somewhere between 2 to 30 shots) all look the same as what I posted witht he only difference being my distance to the subject. So my range goes from 30+feet (I'd say close to infinity as far as the camera is concerned at 18mm) to 3 feet at the closest and not one shot is in focus!

I guess I'm just trying to determine if it's a lens malfunction or something electronic in the camera body.