Issues with my Canon 70D and lenses inc. Err 01

[Geoff79]

Hi all,

Got a few issues that have come up with my camera gear and I'm at a loss as to explain what's happened.

Currently, my Canon 70D body only "works" with my Sigma 10-20mm lens. However, it isn't in synch properly with the body. What I mean by this is that I shoot in Manual mode and rely heavily on the Histogram in Live View mode. However, the Histogram currently does not reflect what the actual photo looks like, at all. Eg. If I take a photo with a perfectly exposed Histogram on the back of the camera, the actual photo is coming out well over-exposed. I need to manually set the camera setting, in Manual mode, so that the histogram looks like it is severely underexposed. Only then will the camera take a properly exposed photo. It's very frustrating, as now every photo I take requires all guesswork and experimentation - with nothing to guide me.

The second issue is that my other three lenses no longer work with the camera. My 18-250mm, 100mm and 50-250mm all now come up with the Err 01 message when I try to take a photo, which is for "Err 01 Communications between the camera and lens is faulty. Clean the lens contacts."

I have followed all the Youtube suggestions about cleaning everything etc. and am about to try an electrical tape method... which apparently gets the lenses working in full manual mode. But this is not what I want. That's fine for landscape shots, and even Macro... but I can't be using manual lenses when I want to take photos of the kids running around.

I am just very confused about what's actually happened here. Obviously if it was one lens and something had happened, I'd assume the lens was faulty. But I don't think that has anything to do with it. Three of my perfectly working lenses haven't just suddenly all become faulty, so I have to expect it's something more to do with the camera body? But again, everything looks okay there too.

I should add that I did recently get a bit of rain and seaspray on the camera and the only lens that is still working. But not on the lenses that don't work, and the moisture, really, isn't anything more than what the camera has already endured before. I'm pretty confident that's not the cause, but then I don't know what is.

Biggest issue is I don't know what to do now. Every fix I've tried on the net doesn't work, including updating Firmware, which I just completed. Made no difference. Just not sure what the next step is. Any tips I may not have seen yet?

[ameerat42]

Hi all,
...

Biggest issue is I don't know what to do now. Every fix I've tried on the net doesn't work, including updating Firmware, which I just completed. Made no difference. Just not sure what the next step is. Any tips I may not have seen yet?

After all that, it sounds like your camera may need some remedial action (repair/replace).
Interim-ly, try the lenses on a different camera body to confirm where the fault lies;
can you adjust the EV setting to give less exposure in the meantime? - Since you shoot
in Manual mode.

[nardes]

Ouch - not good news at all Geoff, sorry to hear of your camera problems.

The only time I have experienced a difference between what I see in Live View vs the JPG displayed once the photo has been taken is when I accidentally turned off "Exposure Simulation" so that Live View showed a correctly exposed image but the actual as-taken photo was over exposed.

In terms of the error message, if all 3 other lenses report a problem then it looks like the body may be the source?

Hope you get it fixed.

Cheers

Dennis

[Mark L]

So the cameras contact to the lens seems to be a place to be looking at. No doubt you have tried cleaning the cameras contacts with a pencil eraser?

[Tannin]

It looks as though it's time to send the 70D off to a repair shop. I have dealt with Peter at Accurate Instrument Servicing in Brisbane several times and can recommend him, but you may have somebody local. Be aware that it is unlikely to be a cheap little fix (or so I guess), you may consider buying a second-hand body as a straight replacement instead.

[Oakley]

Hi Geoff, just in the last week I have had the same error message but only when I use one of my lenses.

I tried cleaning the contacts with metho which was suggested by my local camera shop but no luck so I rang a repair place in Brisbane and told them the error message and details, they actually gave me a quote over the phone which of course was not cheap so at least now I know, but I still might try Marks method with a pencil eraser.

Good luck

[Tannin]

I tried cleaning the contacts with metho

And if that doesn't work, you could always try drinking it ....... er ....

[Geoff79]

Sorry guys, didn't mean to post and run. Just had the first week of the school holidays off with the kids and spent most the week up the coast with the family. Thanks for all the replies and just quickly, as I find these threads a good reference source, I'll go through the replies;

After all that, it sounds like your camera may need some remedial action (repair/replace).
Interim-ly, try the lenses on a different camera body to confirm where the fault lies;
can you adjust the EV setting to give less exposure in the meantime? - Since you shoot
in Manual mode.

Thanks Am. I have a 40D body but during all this I found out I no longer have a working battery for the 40D. I honestly have no idea how or why this has happened, but at the moment I have no other body to try the lenses out on.

I have been adjusting the EV setting accordingly as I shoot at the moment, but the problem is it's not a once stop fix. For example, I can't just set the EV two or three or four stops lower and trust this to produce a correctly exposed photo every time, as it doesn't seem to provide me with any such consistency. It is, frustratingly, a test and go each time. I took the camera out for one sunrise shoot one morning in Port Mac and all I could do was look at the live picture on the back of the viewfinder and go off that, completely ignoring the histogram... even turning it off, for the first time in years. Sad days.

I have taken a couple of shots of the kids in Av mode of the last few days, and they've been mostly properly exposed... thankfully. So it just seems to be manual mode, I think? Haven't had time to test it all out properly again.

Ouch - not good news at all Geoff, sorry to hear of your camera problems.

The only time I have experienced a difference between what I see in Live View vs the JPG displayed once the photo has been taken is when I accidentally turned off "Exposure Simulation" so that Live View showed a correctly exposed image but the actual as-taken photo was over exposed.

In terms of the error message, if all 3 other lenses report a problem then it looks like the body may be the source?

Hope you get it fixed.

Cheers

Dennis

Thanks Dennis. Wow, I thought you'd actually come up with the solution there as I'm inclined to do silly things like that, but no, sadly, that's not it either. I did turn the Exposure Simulation function on and off to see if it reset or something, but no luck.

So the cameras contact to the lens seems to be a place to be looking at. No doubt you have tried cleaning the cameras contacts with a pencil eraser?

Yeah Mark lots of cleaning. I didn't actually try the eraser thing as one source actually said that wasn't a good idea. I've cleaned the contacts with cloths, but not an eraser or metho.

More to follow at the bottom...

It looks as though it's time to send the 70D off to a repair shop. I have dealt with Peter at Accurate Instrument Servicing in Brisbane several times and can recommend him, but you may have somebody local. Be aware that it is unlikely to be a cheap little fix (or so I guess), you may consider buying a second-hand body as a straight replacement instead.

Thanks Tony. Yep, some big decisions to be made. I've been aching for a full frame camera for a long while and this could just be the excuse... just need to see where that leaves me with my lenses though, as I can't afford a new camera, let alone a new camera with new lenses.

Hi Geoff, just in the last week I have had the same error message but only when I use one of my lenses.

I tried cleaning the contacts with metho which was suggested by my local camera shop but no luck so I rang a repair place in Brisbane and told them the error message and details, they actually gave me a quote over the phone which of course was not cheap so at least now I know, but I still might try Marks method with a pencil eraser.

Good luck

Oh dear, sorry to hear it. Terrible, isn't it? Have you sent it away yet? If not, try this one last thing.

Okay, so after all that I haven't found a fix but I have been able to use my lenses over the last couple of days. Not perfectly or even well... but I've been able to use them.

So the cleaning of the contacts didn't work for me. I was about to try using electrical tape to cover the contacts to give me full manual lenses, but did not like that idea.

What has kind of worked, is a mixture of one of the methods I saw on YouTube. So the advice was to click the lens into place - try to take a pic and you get the error message. So, they advise to slightly turn the lens out of it's locked position, so it was still properly fastened, but the contacts were not touching. This, essentially, would allow the lens to be used, but again, in full manual mode as the contacts are not touching. So, what I did, was I tried this method. Loosened the lenses a tad, took a few snaps, which worked fine, in full manual mode. But, then I clicked the lens back in and I haven't tried one lens yet, but it has worked for my 100mm macro and 18-250mm lens to get them back up and working again. Every now and then I have focus issues, or I get the error message once in a while. In which case I just repeat the process - unclick the lens, take a couple of shots, then click the lens back in.

Not saying this will work for everyone, but it's got my lenses working again, well enough, while I ponder the long term solution.

As for the histogram in live view - that's still broken. Looks like there's no fixing that.

[farmmax]

I assume you have tried to reset the 7D on it's default settings - just in case you have accidentally altered some settings ?

I had an error 99 on the 50D when using it on Lord Howe. It was about electrical contacts. Lots of sand and spray. I tried all the methods you suggested above. With the battery contacts inside the camera, I used cotton buds sloppy with metho and swabbed vigorously, then with fresh cotton buds dried and polished the contacts. I had tried a gentle swab with metho without sucdess. What I didn't think to do, was the same to each of my batteries contacts as well. Once I did that, the error messages stopped. My batteries tend to just float around in my backpack and obviously became grubby enough to not deliver full power through to the camera.

[Geoff79]

I assume you have tried to reset the 7D on it's default settings - just in case you have accidentally altered some settings ?

I had an error 99 on the 50D when using it on Lord Howe. It was about electrical contacts. Lots of sand and spray. I tried all the methods you suggested above. With the battery contacts inside the camera, I used cotton buds sloppy with metho and swabbed vigorously, then with fresh cotton buds dried and polished the contacts. I had tried a gentle swab with metho without sucdess. What I didn't think to do, was the same to each of my batteries contacts as well. Once I did that, the error messages stopped. My batteries tend to just float around in my backpack and obviously became grubby enough to not deliver full power through to the camera.

Thanks for the reply! Well, that was interesting. I just gave the batteries a good wipe and tried to get into the battery slot with a good wipe too. Lenses all working okay at the moment. I went outside to test the live view histogram against the actual photos too, and interestingly, they matched once more. The histogram in live view was exposed as per the actual photo taken. Very interesting. I don't know if this is one of it's temperamental phases or if this has sorted the issues.

I'll be away tonight and again looking at 0% cloud cover for all mornings coming up, but I will probably be taking the camera out most days next week before work, so I'll give it a good thorough test then. I noticed in wiping my batteries down - not for the first time - that one of the batteries (I have 3) feels a bit "oily" for lack of a better term. I've put it aside to not use that one for now, and see how things progress. There doesn't appear to be any issue with it that I can see... but like I say, just feels a bit "oily" and I'm not sure if that's creating issues when in use and maybe even it's residue when not in use? I'll leave it out of the rotation and see what happens.

Thanks for that tip!

[Geoff79]

After all that, it sounds like your camera may need some remedial action (repair/replace).
Interim-ly, try the lenses on a different camera body to confirm where the fault lies;
can you adjust the EV setting to give less exposure in the meantime? - Since you shoot
in Manual mode.

Hi Am. Just on this, I wanted to give a follow-up.

So I used the camera quite a lot this week.

Number one certainty is I don't trust the Histogram anymore. I can't and won't even look at it anymore as it's giving me entirely incorrect info. This is a bummer as I'd come to rely on my Histogram for all my landscape shots. Big loss.

On this over-exposure issue - it seems to come and go in horrid waves. For instance, this morning I was perched up on the top of a cliff taking photos of simple but beautiful scene amidst another terrible (for photography) sunrise. For the sake of the discussion, one second I am taking photos pre-sunrise at 0.8 of a second. Then, next time i press the shutter button the photo is completely blown out and I need to up the speed, pre-sunrise, to about 50-60s or something, to get a properly exposed shot. ISO and f/stop have not changed in this time.

So the thing that is really blowing my mind, is that the camera is doing things it can't do when it goes into these fits. In Manual mode I cannot adjust the EV setting at all when it gets like this - it gets locked up. In Av I can adjust the EV and I was down to about -3 or -4 this morning, just to get a properly exposed photo.

And then after a few mins the camera resets itself and I can take normally exposed photos. It's a terribly frustrating ride.

I survived this morning as shutter speed wasn't overly important (though not what I wanted at all when it went wild), but often it's happening when I'm still trying to get a bit of motion in the water and all of a sudden I have to shoot at 50-60 seconds, before the light arrives, just to get a decently exposed shot.

Anyway, sorry for the bore. Just an update on my woes. Grrr.