C100 MkII Mechanical issues

[Bill Grant]

Hello Everyone,
I got my C100 MkII in March of 2015 and it has been an amazing workhorse of a camera. Several hundred shoots later, I had a total meltdown in February of 2016. After inserting a new card (sandisk extreme 32GB) the camera did not power on. I figured it was a battery thing so I replaced the battery, still didn't come on. I put the card in my C100 mkI and it didn't come on either. I even tried the AC adapter. I ended up having to send both cameras back to Canon and they replaced the main boards in both cameras which had been shorted out. Canon indicated at the time that it was the card that caused the damage and that seems correct because it happened to both cameras after using that card. Flash forward to last Wednesday, I shot an interview on another Sandisk Extreme 32GB (not the same one) that I had been using for about 6 months. When I stopped the recording, I went into media mode to check the recording and the card did not show up. I ended up sending the card to a data recovery place, it was physically damaged and recovery would be $1800. Now, my C100 MkII is at Canon and I can't get an answer from anyone as to what is causing the issues. Is it the cards, or the camera? Canon says cards, Sandisk says camera. At this point, I'm concerned about using the camera at all. What should I do? The C100mkI is working fine right now, but I need to be confident in my equipment and right now I'm not. Anyone have any suggestions?
Bill

[Dan Brockett]

I can't understand how a piece of recording media could cause any damage to the camera. But still, that is a weird situation you found yourself in. Don't know what to tell you, I have a C100 MKI that has been a rock, never had any problem or issue and I shoot to a Atomos Ninja Blade with dual card internal recording. I had the Blade crash once with an SSD while shooting a lot of green screen but thanfully I was able to transcode the AVCHD from the camera to Prores, it keyed fine. Still, if Canon is blaming the media, perhaps there could be something to that?

Obviously change out the media when you get your camera back, put in a battery and let it record for an hour or two to make sure that it is working fine. It's not a good thing to not be able to count on your camera.

[Bill Grant]

Yeah,
Obviously I replaced all of those cards. But, so far that's two Sandisk Extreme cards that have gone belly up on me. I don't love the not knowing. If I could blame someone. That would help. :)
Bill

[Gareth Watkins]

Perhaps trying Lexars or Transcends is worth a pop !!

[Noa Put]

If you google it you can find a few threads of users who have had similar problems with photocamera's like in this thread: Can a memory card short-circuit a camera? - Photo.net Mirrorless Digital Cameras Forum
It's the first time I ever heard of this and that's actually quite scary if that happens on a non repeatable event when your main and backup camera end up dead just by a tiny little card.

[Bill Grant]

And a brand new card. From Amazon. Super scary

[Christopher Young]

It's not unheard of that's for sure. Interesting posts here about "Killer cards." We take these cards for granted because we hear so few stories like this. That's one thing I will say about the days of tape I never had one totally fry a camera or lose 100% of its data in one go. Maybe get the odd dropout or crease but never lost everything in one disastrous mishap.

SportsShooter.com - Dead Nikon D300 from a Compact Flash card????

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Jim Andrada]

One of my engineering friends mentioned that now that we've removed lead from all our electronics, we're more susceptible to the growth of tiny metallic whiskers that can lead to shorts. No idea if this could be the cause, but it's an interesting hypothesis. There are ways of protecting against the whiskers, but they add a lot of cost so there's an obvious disincentive to use them.

Is this at the root of the problem or is it technical paranoia - who knows? I don't have a position one way or the other because I'm not an electrical engineer. Just a thought.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Christopher Young

That's one thing I will say about the days of tape I never had one totally fry a camera or lose 100% of its data in one go. Maybe get the odd dropout or crease but never lost everything in one disastrous mishap.

I did... Over 100 dropouts on a brand-new tape that just came out of it's packaging and was used in a brandnew camera, the camera gave no warning whatsoever during a wedding ceremony shoot until I got home and tried to load the footage. One possible explanation that was given to me was that it was cold and humid outside and very warm and dry inside a church and that the sudden change in temperature and humidity might have caused the problem as I changed tapes when I just arrived at the church. Right after that event I got myself a external recorder which was permanently attached to the camera.

[Christopher Young]

I understand what you are saying Noa. Maybe I was being a bit flippant.

Some years back I had to do an interview shoot with our then Prime Minister Bob Hawke. On the way out I grabbed a brand new pack of Sony SP Betacam tapes.

When we got back to the edit suite we were mortified to find dropouts right throughout the footage. Across his face, his mouth and some dropouts looked like they were going in one ear and out the other.

I had to grab the final edit into what was back then Paintbox and Rotoscope the frames painting out the dropouts cloning from previous of following fields and then export back to tape.

At least the footage was there unlike some horror stories I hear where the footage has just disappeared off a card due to corruption or some other unexplained disaster.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Bill Grant]

I'll add that I had several times over many formats from good old Sony pd170 to Canon A1s where I lost a whole tape. The tape heads got misaligned or a bad tape. In fact, I dumped the a1s completely after the last time it happened. 1 hr split into 387 mini clips. And in 6 years of using dslrs and c100s, this is the first trouble I've had.

[Christopher Young]

I can't talk too much about Mini DV as never used it that much. My main tape experiences started with U-Matic then BVU then Betacam followed by SP Betacam then Digi-Beta and finally DVC Pro HD before we moved to XDCam discs. With those formats from the 70's up until now I never lost a complete tape. Had problems for sure but never lost a complete tape.

I had an XDCam disc cause massive damage to a PDW on one shoot. Sony investigated this one deeply to find out that a fine talc like dust was inside the disc cartridge from manufacture. This caused the laser head to crash into the spinning disc. The laser head tracks in to focus on the disc surface but because of the fine dust on the disc the laser just didn't focus it just kept tracking in trying to focus until it crashed the laser head into the disc surface and destroyed the laser.

I guess I'm just getting paranoid, like yesterday I was shooting for a network onto their cards but still backed up the shoot on an Atomos as I went just to be safe. I can't ever recall shooting to a backup in tape days. Why was that I wonder? I think I know why because it meant you had to carry a Betacam portable deck with you at the same time.

Sometimes you can just be unlucky Bill and unfortunately in this horror story it was you. Trust all goes well once everything is back to normal.

Chris Young
CYV Productions
Sydney

[Bill Grant]

A little update. Canon still has my camera. No idea what's wrong. They've sent me a loaner which is fine. But I want mine back.
Bill

[Ben Moore]

That is scary!. I just added a Mark II to my Kit. So I too have a Mark I and a Mark II. I hope its not an issue with sharing/formatting in the 2 diff. versions of camera's. Makes me want to dedicate cards to each just in case.
I did have a weird issue today with the mark II recording 17 Mbps when it was set to 24 Mbps. Only reason I even noticed is because the Mark I used up space so much quicker than the Mark II (multicam cam shot)

Separate issue I'm sure, but weird non the less......

[Gary Huff]

I have had both the C100 Mark I and Mark II and now a C300 Mark II. I have used Sandisk media exclusively. Zero issues.