EOS400D 'Freezing'

[GeorgeUK]

Another odd thing happened on my camera today.

Taking photos, then all of a sudden with the last one, the camera froze.

- Nothing on the rear screen
- Wouldn't turn off/on (light remained)
- No response from any button

Only thing I could do was remove the battery.

On replacing the battery, it did it again. And again.

Only sorted itself out when I replaced the battery with a new fully charged one.

Is this normal behaviour for when the battery runs out?

 

[Sideburns]

well maybe it didn't have enough power for what it wanted to do..no idea. I don't think I've ever let it run completely dead.

 

[yeti]

Another odd thing happened on my camera today.

Taking photos, then all of a sudden with the last one, the camera froze.

- Nothing on the rear screen
- Wouldn't turn off/on (light remained)
- No response from any button

Only thing I could do was remove the battery.

On replacing the battery, it did it again. And again.

Only sorted itself out when I replaced the battery with a new fully charged one.

Is this normal behaviour for when the battery runs out?

Hi GeorgeUK,

I am a not-so-proud ex-owner of a Canon Digital Rebel XTi (exactly the same camera as yours, but marketed & sold on this side of the ocean). Unfortunately what you describe sounds all too familiar. My brand new Canon SLR had the same problem. It experienced it again and again...

No, from what I understand this is NOT normal. Upon investigating the matter on my own I discovered that the camera seems to have problem reading out the status of its battery, so it reports it full (or nearly full) pretty much all the time, even after hundreds of shots taken with it. That, of course, causes it to ultimately run short of it while taking a shot. It "freezes" because it is essentially a small computer inside and its internal memory gets corrupted just the same as your regular computer's when it isn't properly powered. Basically your camera freezing on you is the result of its battery not being read correctly, rather than the problem itself.

I did some Googling and discovered that Canon appears to have denied a problem when other people called them about this, which doesn't mean that you shouldn't call them if your camera is still in warranty. I personally didn't go this far because I was still able to exchange it with the retailer I originally bought it from. I encourage you to do the same if you can and if possible get the next model up: the 40D - it is worth the extra money, trust me.

I hope this helps you in some way. Sorry for the bad news.

 

[GeorgeUK]

Hi Yeti, thank you for the reply, very interesting.

This is actually not the first time I have encountered this phenomenon, it happened on another EOS400D I borrowed from out local church last year.

At the time when it occurred on my camera, the battery reading was one third. I think when it occurred on the church camera the battery was reading full.

I'm not sure how to progress to be honest. If the camera can take shots up until the end and this happens as a signal to change batteries as it were, I think I can live with it. If this was happening showing full battery like on the church camera there would be more of an issue.

I'll have a read up about it and think more on what to do. Thanks once again.:thumbup:

 

[iriairi]

Wow. Had my XTi for 6 mos or more and never seen this. I will keep an eye out for it. Wonder if a BIOS flash would help (even if Canon doesn't admit the problem.)

 

[yeti]

Hi iriairi,

A firmware flash might or might not help, depending on what is wrong. I was told not all XTi's have this problem (apparently you have one of the working ones), but apparently some do and this problem is not that rare.

Anyway, I decided not to risk it and decided to stay well away from that particular model. I would advise other people to do the same, at least until the problem is sorted out.

 

[BYoung]

My XTi does this too. But only when I'm messing around and cranking the f/stop up to like 33 or something. And it doesn't always happen. Its happened maybe 5 times in the nearly 2 months I have had the camera (1839 pictures taken on it since new). It happened the most when I first got the camera and didn't know the XTi.

It doesn't seem like a serious issue anyways. If it does happen I just switch it off, then back on and its fine again. It's not like it cripples the camera when it happens, it just takes 30 seconds away from shooting photo's.

 

[iriairi]

So basically if I have made it this far, I probably don't have the problem. Not that i am just looking out for me, More just curious if I need to stay on alert.

Hi iriairi,

A firmware flash might or might not help, depending on what is wrong. I was told not all XTi's have this problem (apparently you have one of the working ones), but apparently some do and this problem is not that rare.

Anyway, I decided not to risk it and decided to stay well away from that particular model. I would advise other people to do the same, at least until the problem is sorted out.

 

[yeti]

Hi iriari,

If you haven't seen it yet, chances are you won't see it ever. I noticed the problem with my camera virtually right away, but for a while I thought it's normal (it was my first SLR, before I hadn't even handled one).