Does the Canon 5D need to be recalled?

I am now on my second 5D in just over two months and I've grown to hate Canon

for manufacturing and hyping such a defective product. A quick google search

will tell you that I am not alone in this thinking. I had a Canon 10D for two

years before this and never had any problems other than the usual low-light

focusing issues that come with the 10D. <p>

 

I returned the first 5D after the mirror fell out of the camera two days after

receiving it. <p>

 

Now, less than two months after receiving the second 5D, I am having some issues

where the camera's aperture sets itself to "00" no matter how much I try to

adjust this setting. This has happened three times in the last week in all

shooting modes, including auto-focus. <p>

 

When this happens, the camera refuses to focus automatically, making me think

that perhaps I inaverdently switched the lens mode from "A" to "M". Last night,

when this happened for the third time this week, I checked the lens mode,

switching to "M" and back to "A" again, only to watch my camera suddenly start

taking picture after picture, as if I were holding the shutter button in

continuous mode, which I wasn't. <p>

 

 

I finally had to turn the camera off to get it to stop shooting.When I turned

the camera on a few seconds later, it continued shooting and even did so after I

switched memory cards. When I got home last night, I turned the camera on again

and fortunately, it did not start shooting, but the aperture was still stuck in

"00". <p>

 

It finally fixed itself when I pushed the 24-70 mm lens against the body,

leaving me to believe the problem may lie in the area where the lens mount

connects to the camera. It is not the lens because once I even switched lenses

and the problem had not fixed itself.<p>

 

This morning, the camera is fine, but I know it's only a matter of time.<p>

 

 

<a href="http://www.peterlanger.com/Canon5D.htm">Someone else who is not

satisfied with the Canon 5D</a>

Sorry to hear of your problems, but lets not blow this out of proportion...the fact is, there many that have no issues with their 5D cameras....your experience represents the exception and not the rule....sure one can find other people on the internet with issues, but again, this is the minority. Take it to Canon for free full service.

 

By the way, have you reset the camera yet, but removing all batteries, and waiting several minutes? Do you routinely TURN OFF the camera when changing lenses, adding/removing flashes, removing/inserting CF cards, etc? This is very important.

I'm a happy user of 5D since the month it was released. Never had a single problem with it. However, I had persistent "00" aperture problem with my elan IIe back in the 90s - I cleaned contacts on a camera mount with alcohol and the problem was gone for good.

No problems w/mine.

I've never had any problems with my F1n purchased in 1981 and still going strong. Technology comes at a price, you pay to play. Just my opinion, but there seems to be more (forced) acceptance (by manufacturing) of crappy products today than in previous years. The "dead pixel" policy with lcd screens, for example. Thanks.

8 months, 8000 frames, no problems.

Refering to the link: The moisture could've got in the camera before Mr. Langer got to Sri Lanka. It's very likely in a matter of fact. Using the hair dryer probably made the condensation worse.

I've had mine for about seven months, shot around 4000 photos, and no defects.

No man-made mechanism is 100 % foolproof. 5D is no exception. You are perhaps just unlucky. Where did you buy it? I still have total confidence on mine after shooting thousands of pics in 6 months.

I have had my 5D since November 2005 ~15000 snaps later I have had absolutly no problem with it, and am considering getting a second one. Sorry your experience has not been so good.

No problems with mine. 7 Months, 22500 frames and still shooting. What else could I ask for...

Bought my 5D almost exactly a year ago; approaching 40,000 images and still problem-free. I do ALWAYS turn it off before changing anything.

20,000+ exposures and not a hiccup - excellent product so far. I also know six other 5D

professional users, none of whom have had any problems at all...

 

Obviously any product line will have lemons, but it can be irresponsible to try and extrapolate

too much from that. Generally those who are 100% satisfied make much less noise than those

who have issues. I would get your second body straight back to Canon with a list of your

problems, and not wait for what sounds like a defective body to screw up again.

These are the first reliability complaints I have heard of the 5D. As for the link, if you get damp in any electronic product you should expect malfunction to be likely, so I would take that with a pinch of salt.

Im on my 2nd 5d , 1st one started acting erratically with exposure all over the place and eventually it got so bad it was unuseable.

This one seems fine apart from excessive VF dust.

I've never been happier with a camera.

Are you sure that the mirror fell out of your first body? It wasn't the interchangeable focus screen?

 

The 00 aperture is what the camera displays when it thinks a manual lens is attached - ie stop down metering. Sounds like dirt on body or lens contacts to me.

My pictures have been coming out TOO good. Despite this, I am keeping the camera as it is.

I wonder if the user was using Canon lenses or something else. Lots of times the elaborate electronics aren't compatible with third party pieces. Also as a previous poster stated make sure you turn off all power when changing lenses or putting a flash on the shoe. I've had my 5D for about 6 months with not a bit of trouble, but I adhere to the above safe-use practices.

I did have a very minor problem with my 5D. About a week or two into having it, the LCD screen developed a vertical line of grey pixels that would not go away. Nothing that affected the overall functionality, just somewhat annoying. If it had happened later out-of-warranty, I could have lived with it, as I don't tend to spend much time obsessing over the thing. However, since it was brand new, I simply brought it back to the point of purchase and swapped it for a new one.

 

In every other respect, I've been immensely satisfied with the camera and it's capabilities.

Of course one breakdown (or happy customer) means nothing so I've doen the stats to get a better picture.

And based on the stats in this post there are 3? reported problems and 12 happy customers (maybe 15 but some of the responses were more questioning the OP that saying they were happy with their 5D).

 

That is a failure rate just a bit below 25 per cent. Probably not something Canon should be too proud of.

<i>I've doen the stats to get a better picture</i><P>

You've counted some responses from a single thread on a photo website, and designated any problems at all as a "failure," in order to get a completely-meaningless picture. If the failure rate of the 5D was close to 25%, there would thousands of angry posts on the internet about it.<P>

I can sympathize with the original poster about getting bad samples of the camera. Canon should definately repair of replace his camera, but finding a handful of cases of faulty cameras out of tens of thousands of cameras sold hardly justifies a recall.<P>

And for what it's worth my 5D hasn't had any problems in 10 months and over 18,000 frames shot (including a few thousand in rainy conditions).

The posts in this thread are not a random sample and too few in number to do any kind of reliable statistical analysis.

 

I had to have two fairly new Canon F-1Ns repaired but that didn't make it a poor quality camera model, just the luck of the draw. They both still work fine since the repairs nearly 20 years ago.

 

I have had my 5D for 10 months and 11,000 frames with no problems. I love it.

 

Jim

Reading the bit about 00 aperture and two things spring to mind:-

<br>

<ol>

<li>Incompatible lens: I had an old Sigma lens which worked fine on my EOS30E/Elan 7E but on my 20D would cause the 20D to go to 00 aperture.

<li>Poor contact: If the lens contacts are dirty the lens can't communicate with the camera which can cause the same effect.

</ol>

<BR>

And one other problem: Satisfied people rarely post to say how pleased they are, its people with problems who make the most noise so given the number of 5D's out there and the relative few making noises I'd say its not a wide spread problem.

"I've doen the stats to get a better picture"

 

You can't get meaningfull statistics from internet posts. These suffer from what is called selection bias, simply people are much more likely to complain about a problem then to take the trouble to write in.

 

In volume production a failure rate of 1% would be very high and this would result in hundreds of angry posts on each forum.

 

If all you can find on a probuct is 1 or 2 posts from people that have a problem with a product that has been on the market for the better part of a year you can expect it to be reliable over that time period.