Pixel Perfect wrote:
FW 2.0 has been a disaster for me. I ignored my own advice not to touch it with a 10 foot pole and stupidly installed it last night. Now camera is essentially a paper weight. I have tried everything but camera locks up 95% of the time with err 20 with only the occasional random working shot.
I downloaded from UK I think and applied via CF card as I always have done and followed the procedure they outline as I always do and removed batteries, several times, formatted CF card, cleared all camera and CFn settings, tried two different lenses. Really p!ssed as I'm on holidays and 7D was one of my birding specific cameras. Luckily I have other cameras with me. I work at Canon in Sydney Australia and will take it in next Monday to see if they can put version 1.2.5 back on it or get it to work. ...Show more →
Sheesh, I wonder what causes something like that to happen? Mine is early production as I waited on a list and took delivery in early Oct 2009. Maybe there are slight hardware or software differences in later production? Or a defect in your camera? I updated my 7D about 2 weeks ago and, with near daily use, have yet to have a problem (other than a little spilled beer).
FYI, I had my 7D into CPS for clean and focus tweak and they did the install as a part of the service. I did not have it on my list of things for them to do/check. I even had downloaded it myself before I checked and saw they had loaded it for me. Just an FYI...
Apparently Err 20 is mechanical failure, so this is weird. Camera has worked flawlessly for the nearly 3 years I have owned it until I installed FW 2, no it thinks I have some sort of mechanical failure, which I guess is why removing battery doesn't fix problem if true. Still seems like too much of a coincidence to me, unless FW does some enhanced diagnostics that FW 1.2.5 didn't have.
Chumma wrote:
Can there be country-specific variation to the FW? Very unlikely. The previous version you had was the Australian version?
No they are all the same, but the region location that pops up after the update is region specific. I just reinstalled just in case there may have been some file problem.
Looks like camera is kaput; get err 20 continually now.
My 7D is an early model too (Oct 2009). My update seemed to go well. No lockups, and this weekend I shot some ice hockey in low light and all is well.
FoCal Pro seems to be a different story, though. It worked fine before. When I tried it again to see if the MA changed on my 70-200 and 100-400, I frequently got error messages that said it couldn't communicate with the camera, and I had to close and relaunch several times.
The 70-200 went from MA numbers of -3, -4, and -5 throughout the range to -10, -14, and -14. The FoCal report showed those settings to be sharp, but in real life they are not. I went back to -4.
Similar issues with the 100-400, where the lens went from around -4 to +4 to -17 to +5.
And when I tried the 24-105, I also got bad results. To the point that 24mm was completely blurred and unusable until I disconnected the camera from the laptop and remounted the lens. Then it went back to normal.
I have more testing to do when I have time, but at the moment I've lost all confidence in FoCal, and I wonder if its the FW.
Yakim Peled wrote:
This is a very logical thought but AFAIK there was only one Canon DSLR which had more than a 3 year lifespan - The 1Ds3.
Happy shooting,
Yakim.
5D II => 5D III was 3.5 years, wasnt it?
@ bluewest:
"announcing" a new body around photokina does not neccesarily mean it would be available around christmas time, right? It is a good idea of marketing to keep 7D users happy and proud of owning a 7D for a couple of more month to prevent them to purchase anything else offered from competitors ... maybe something d600 like.
What irritates me is the fact that it is not possible to enhance the buffer size physically via firmware update. What imo means the cameras great capabilities where held down in the past. Why this? To give it less chances against in house competitors?
Ralph Conway wrote:
What irritates me is the fact that it is not possible to enhance the buffer size physically via firmware update. What imo means the cameras great capabilities where held down in the past. Why this? To give it less chances against in house competitors?
Ralph
Or maybe the programers had some spare time to optimize the 7D code and finishing the 650D.
Yakim Peled wrote:
Yep. Thanks for the correction.
Happy shooting,
Yakim.
Considering how incremental improvements seem to becoming the norm, I won't be surprised if the time between new versions of cameras increases in the future and becomes the time norm. I would guess that more frequent new models will remain with the Rebel series, but, with 1D, 5D, and 7D series bodies, it may well be the case that 3 years or more will be the standard. The 7D will be at 3 years in a matter of days. Also, even though the difference isn't large, the 1D Mark II life cycle was also a month or so longer than 3 years.
It has to be starting to get more difficult for Canon (and for other manufacturers) to come up with upgraded features and performance that are significant enough to convince people to spend the money to upgrade. I know that, for me, there was a time when, every time I upgraded my camera bodies, I was happy with the better performance and features, but I always wanted something more. With my two current bodies, a 1D Mark IV and 7D, there is nothing that either of them does for which I am anxious to see improvements, and, even though both of the bodies are around 3 years old, for the first time in my DSLR experience, I have no real need and feel no real interest in upgrading either of them.
Also, to update the lock up situation with my 7D after the firmware update, after having a lock-up right after updating the firmware and before taking my first shot with the new firmware, I've used the camera almost every day for the last two weeks and have had no additional issues of any kind.
Ralph Conway wrote:
What irritates me is the fact that it is not possible to enhance the buffer size physically via firmware update. What imo means the cameras great capabilities where held down in the past. Why this? To give it less chances against in house competitors?
Ralph
Wow! I don't know why I'm surprised that people always seem to look at things from a negative perspective. That's like claiming the automobile industry was always holding back horsepower. Guess what, garage mechanics have found ways to tweak that same engine to go faster for years. Computers are often optimized by software to speed them up...read up on AMD and NVidia drivers for graphics cards. They extend the life of MANY video cards by tweaking the software. It's always the outsider who knows nothing of what it takes and complains and accuse of hiding something.
I posted this in another forum, but since the FW update, my camera shows "Cannot communicate with battery Use this battery?" whenever I change batteries. Initially, I though it was because I had a 3rd party battery, but it also happens with an original Canon battery. The camera still functions normally, but there is no battery data shown in the LCD, so I have no idea how much charge is left.
I reloaded the FW again tonight, but nothing is different. Everything else seems to work as anticipated. Any thoughts?
