Toronto Photography Meetup Group

I was shooting at a work event last night with my Canon Rebel XSI and half way down the event, the camera went into a literal coma mode. The body is about a year or so old with around 10K actuations. I bought the body from a friend a few months ago and during this time, i did not experience any machanical issues whatsoever. Here is a quick description of what happened:

The viewfinder display went blank, the shutter button stopped responding and consequently, the 17-50 tamron f2.8 lens did not focus at all. The LCD screen was lit throughout so i switched to live view mode and i was able to take some photos using this function. I turned the body on and off a few times but this did not solve the problem.

I tried another lens on the body but the problem persisted. Also tried mounting and unmounting the lenses and flash a few times but to no avail.

The LCD screen functions were acting up to. I was able to move the cursor between shutter speed and aperture value but could not change them using the dial control.

I then went into the menu and did a reset on the body and it was only after this step that it came back to life again.

So my question to TPMG is "What can possibly the reason for this?" Bad battery contacts, SD Card, Mount? I did a google search and found atleast a couple of similar instances...though i was surprised to see some people complaining of XSI LCD screens going completely blank **shurgs**

Any feedback or insight into such an issue would be highly appreciated. I think i still have a few months left in my 3 year extended warranty.

Thank You

Sal

Try forcing a reset on it, pull the battery and the watch battery, let sit for five minutes.

might be firmware, hard reset always helps, my XSI acted up a bit when it was cold, but nothing like what you mentioned

Viewfinder is blank but live view works? When you take the lens off and look inside the body, is the mirror down? If not, is something preventing it from dropping?

I think med is right, mirror does not seem to be in either of the two expected states. Open enough for live view sensor and blocking the viewfinder.

thank you med

i meant to say that the "digital display" in the viewfinder vanished. i could still see through the viewfinder.

Sounds like it just needed to be reset -- this happened once to me with a nikon camera -- I can't remember which model. I did a reset, and everything was fine after. Definately check out your shutter to make sure its ok - sometimes that can be related to these kinds of problems.

sounds more like electronic issue, might be contacts, even firmware bug, why not stop by a service place and ask them about it

I had a similar issue twice. Once it was because I had something caught on the contacts between the lens and the camera (ie. some of the contacts weren't making contact). removing the lens and cleaning the contacts solved that problem.

Another time everything went screwy but pulling the batteries to reset solved the problem.