2 Equipment Issues Yesterday at wedding - Canon 5DIII & 600EX-RT

futureal33

futureal33

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Morning all,

Shot a wedding on Saturday an encountered two problems with one of my 5D Mark III's and one problem with a Canon 600EX-RT. Never had any trouble before with either - and they have never been dropped / water damage etc, the issues just came out of the blue, during use.

1) While shooting group photos (stressful enough!!) my 5DIII locked up while writing to card, and the red light stayed on (indicating card activity). The screen eventually showed Err 40. This camera wouldn't turn on or off. Luckily I had another, so put this in the bag, and left it. 20 minutes later I came back to the camera and it was all fine again - working fully.

2) The same camera as above again locked up a few hours later, this time with an Err 80. Same thing... while writing to card it locked up and woudn't turn on or off. I only had 1 camera on me at the time and needed it, so removed the battery, and put it back in - this cured the issue, and it had even saved the file it was writing when the camera locked up.

3) Canon 600EX-RT went into TTL mode (rather than ETTL) and wouldn't come out of it. Everything was firing 100% 1/1 power, despite my FEC. It would cycle through M, Grp, Multi and TTL but never E-TTL. I replaced batteries, took it on and off the hot-shoe, but no luck - it simply wouldnt ETTL.
So I swapped the flashes over ( 2 x 5DIII's each with a 600EX-RT) and then both worked in ETTL! No idea...

Any help much appreciated.. I know the obvious answer is to send to Canon but I have another 5 weeks back to back with weddings now, and cant afford to be camera-less while it's away.

Thanks
 
Might be worth mentioning...

The 5DIII with the issues, I recently changed the SD (backup) card from a San Disk Ultra 32GB to a San Disk Extreme 64GB. While the camera was "locked up" the screen displayed "Card 1.2" before displaying Err 80 / Err 40 (both occasions).

I think, when it says "Card 1.2" it means it is writing to the SD card slot, as I have previously used a very slow SD card - and found the "Card 1.2" message staying on for quite a while as it was writing to the slower card... so I assume that's what it means.

The data is all fine on the card. I can read/write to the card, my PC reads it fine etc... but both times the "Err" message came up as it was writing to this card.... coincidence?
I didn't lose any pictures and even though the red light was on as I removed the battery (I would NEVER normally do this, but absolutely needed to get it working ASAP) the file it was writing is intact and working.
 
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Err 40 is a power source problem. Sounds like it locked up due to a brown out or similar.
 
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