Every now and then when shooting I get 'busy' flashing on the top LCD and in the viewfinder, and I can't do things like change aperture/shutter, or take a picture. Turning the camera on/off fixes it. Any idea what might be going on? It doesn't ever stop, so it's not that like the buffer is full or something. It's not a huge deal as I use my 5D purely for landscape work where timing is a little less critical than say sports or wildlife, but it's still a little annoying. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
Maybe you can try to remove the battery for a few minutes, try another memory card, or re-install the firmware (not sure the camera will allow you to do that).
Is it after very long exposures ? If you have long exposure noise reduction C Fn turned to on, the camera takes a 2nd photo of the same exposure time (but without opening the shutter) to compare the two for anomalous noise.
That might not be worded entirely correctly, but it's essentially right, and probably what's happening.
I suggest you not turn the camera off. I am not aware of any bugs with the 5D with regards to the BUSY indicator. If it says busy, it is busy. As Chris said, noise reduction takes a while and may cause the camera to show busy. I think once the buffer is full it shows busy too.
I have noise reduction turned off, I'm using SandDisk Ultra II's and Extreme III's - generally the files load pretty quick. It's not a buffer thing, as I never shoot faster than 1 frame every couple seconds. It's entirely random as far as I can tell, and it keeps on going indefinitely as far as I can tell.. turning it off doesn't do anything bad in terms of causing lost or corrupted images (or hasn't done so before).
By the way - if you turn off the camera during long exposure noise reduction it doesn't matter, it keeps on going (the camera will auto power off after a while itself).
Thanks for the suggestions so far.. I guess I'll look into the firmware?
Battery life is pretty decent I think, my past trip I took 1-2k shots on 2.5 batteries, many of the shots being in the 5+sec range. They're all about 6-12 months old.
floris wrote:
Every now and then when shooting I get 'busy' flashing on the top LCD and in the viewfinder, and I can't do things like change aperture/shutter, or take a picture. Turning the camera on/off fixes it. Any idea what might be going on? It doesn't ever stop, so it's not that like the buffer is full or something. It's not a huge deal as I use my 5D purely for landscape work where timing is a little less critical than say sports or wildlife, but it's still a little annoying. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
The same thing happens with my older 5D. Totally random when it happens, pretty rare, and only way to fix it is to turn the camera off. Then its fine when I turn it back on. Thanks for posting this. I'll try the firmware update as well. I shoot with the extreme III's as well, but I usually have the noise reduction on. I just always figured that its like when a program freezes up on the computer. These cameras are basically computers these days.
Gavilan wrote:
I shoot with the extreme III's as well, but I usually have the noise reduction on. I just always figured that its like when a program freezes up on the computer. These cameras are basically computers these days.
Exactly my thoughts.. like I said, it hasn't effected any of my shooting, but it were like a critical portrait moment or something I could see it being a problem, so figured I'd see if anyone else had experienced the problem..
Computers usually freeze because of the vast amount of (mostly uncontrolled) software you throw at them. A camera should not behave like this. Get it checked.
Regards,
Craig.
