Luminous Landscape Forum

Equipment & Techniques => Digital Cameras & Shooting Techniques => Topic started by: plattners on June 22, 2006, 12:29:41 am

Title: Canon 1Ds Battery Issue
Post by: plattners on June 22, 2006, 12:29:41 am
I have had a 1Ds for 1.5 years. Wish I had more time to use it. It has about 10,000 shutter actuations--so it is relatively new.

At the moment, even though I've fully charged both of my batteries and the indicator lights on the charge tell me the batteries are fully charged, when I install either battery in the body, and turn on the power, the battery indicator in the read-out window on top of the camera indicates that there is no power.

Has anyone encountered this problem and if so, is there a solution for it? I can't imagine how both batteries could fail at the same time. Could the battery contacts in the battery chamber be at fault? They look ok, and seem clean--no corrosion anywhere.

Would appreciate any help you can offer.
Title: Canon 1Ds Battery Issue
Post by: Jonathan Wienke on June 22, 2006, 12:43:29 am
Have you done a refresh cycle lately? If you don't use them, NiMH batteries will get "stale" and lose their charge. Charging them without a complete discharge occasionally will cause them to output a lower-than-normal voltage that fools the camera into thinking they are dead.

Use the camera more often and you'll encounter the problem less often.
Title: Canon 1Ds Battery Issue
Post by: plattners on June 22, 2006, 12:29:02 pm
Quote
Have you done a refresh cycle lately? If you don't use them, NiMH batteries will get "stale" and lose their charge. Charging them without a complete discharge occasionally will cause them to output a lower-than-normal voltage that fools the camera into thinking they are dead.

Use the camera more often and you'll encounter the problem less often.
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I haven't tried the refresh cycle, but just plugged the batteries in to give it a try. Interestingly, five minutes into it, one of the "refresh" lights is blinking, the other is on steadily. Don't know what it means, but we'll see.

Thanks for responding.

S. Plattner
Title: Canon 1Ds Battery Issue
Post by: Jonathan Wienke on June 22, 2006, 12:31:04 pm
You can connect two batteries to the charger, but only one of them can be charged/refreshed at a time. The battery blinking slowly is waiting its turn to refresh.
Title: Canon 1Ds Battery Issue
Post by: plattners on June 25, 2006, 02:15:27 pm
Quote
You can connect two batteries to the charger, but only one of them can be charged/refreshed at a time. The battery blinking slowly is waiting its turn to refresh.
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Jonathan, thanks for your help. Still no luck, so I took it in to a repair shop. They are going to send it to Canon tomorrow. They seemed pretty concerned about the extent and possible expense of the problem--the guy used the term "catastrophic" in his write-up to Canon. He says they may fix it for me, or it could cost many 100's of dollars. It's only about 16 mos. old, and has less than 8,000 shutter actuations, so it's not like it's been worked to death.

Thanks again.