XL1 Power failure
 

Hello,

Before taking the camera in to be repaired I wondered if anyone knew a quick fix to this problem. We were using an XL1 that had not been used in a long time. As soon as we switched it on the backup battery warning light came on. Given that we had to shoot immediately we started filming, hoping to then buy the battery as soon as we had a brake. Unfortunately the camera died 5 minutes into shooting. We then bought the replacement battery from the nearest shop (a MAXEL CR2025), but to no avail. The camera has stayed dead.

Might this be because the battery is not Sony, Panasonic or Duracell, as the manual recommends?

Or do we need to reset the camera on some way.

We were using batteries, rather than AC power as the main power source in this whole process to power the camera.

Any ideas?

I can' t really help you, but I don't really think it would be because of the brand.

I have to admit it is just toooo expensive to buy all Canon batteries I think. It's like (here in Belgium) 250 euros for a BP 941 battery...

Can't help you with the rest though, sorry for going a bit off-topic.
Good luck!

Remove the battery. Wait five minutes, and replace. If that doesn't reset, it's possible you blew an internal fuse. Is the camera completely dead? No power to the zoom, no poer to the viewfinder, no power to the dial illumination button?

The backup battery being dead won't 'shut down' the camera. All it does is retain settings like time and date. The camera will run ok without it. My XL-1 ran fine without it. You'll just have that annyoing flashing icon in the viewfinder.

You mentioned that the camera had not been used in a long time and that you were running on battery power. Your likely problem is the main battery itself. Ni-cads will not run for long if they haven't been charged/discharged recently.

Go buy a new BP-930 or BP-945 and charge it up. Did you try plugging the camera in with the ac adapter? The camera should power up ok on the ac adapter.

regards,

=gb=

The XL1 does not use NiCD batteries, it use Li-Ion. But they have a useful life on the order of a few years, depending on conditions of use and abuse.

As noted the back-up battery should not cause a system failure, just loss of memory when powered off. Any CR2025 shoud lwork OK

The XL1 does contain about 3 fuses for differnt parts of the system.

Can you operate it from AC power? If so, the battery may be bad.

Many thanks for all your help.

The batteries we've been using are relatively new, I'm pretty sure it's not a power supply issue.

It's almost certainly going to be a fuse, I hope at least.

Off to the service center it is then.

I will let you all know the outcome.