Hi all,

I'm having a major problem with my home camera- a little Canon MV500i (PAL version of ZR40)- and was wondering if anyone could help.

This morning I connected my camera up to my PC via Firewire, with the intent of capturing some footage. Something I have done many times before, without any problems. Today, however, not only was the camera not recognised by Premiere 6.0, but it has gone really wierd. The problems include:

(1) The image in camera mode, on both the LCD and the viewfinder, is super-dull (barely visible) and sort of posterised-looking... as though it's displaying chroma but no luma or something.
(2) There is no image during VCR playback, only a black screen. When not playing, but in VCR mode, the Canon splash screen when powering on, and the cassette image that stays on in the background after that, suffer from the same super-dull problem mentioned above. Wierdly, though, the foreground text (date/time, PLAY/REC symbols, etc.) are all displaying normally, i.e. at full brightness, in both VCR and camera modes.
(3) No timecode is displaying in playback mode, even if I have just shot footage. It treats any tape I insert as blank, but displays a black screen instead of the blue it normally would.
(4) The A/V outputs are not doing anything.

I've tried different batteries, different tapes, no battery (mains power), no tape, powering on and off, removing the backup battery, re-connecting to Firewire, all to no avail.

I'll be trying to get in contact with Canon this week, although I don't expect too much help, given that I have had the camera for 2 years or so now. Does anybody have any suggestions? Is there some way the firmware can be reset or something like that?

Many thanks,

-Bon

Bon, you said you've tried removing the backup battery. But have you tried replacing it?

Sounds like a trip to the factory service center, my friend (I believe it's in Sydney).

Chris,

Thanks for the response.

I did put the same backup battery back in- settings were reverted to factory defaults, as expected, and the problem persisted. I haven't tried purchasing another one, if that's what you meant by "replacing."

I was in touch with Canon this morning, and will be sending the camera to their service centre tomorrow. Will post back here to let you know how I go.

Great site, by the way! I use an XL1 at work, and have found plenty of useful information here. I look forward to taking part in future discussions. :)

Cheers,

-Bon

I know it was almost 3 years ago, but can you tell me what happened at repair shop. Was camera repaired or not. How much did repair cost.

Same thing happened to me few days ago.

Thanks.

Very same problem has happened to my MV500i this morning too - a very dark LCD and Viewfinder with the image showing up dark and posterised. The tape icon on the LCD screen is very dark and hard to see and the Canon start up animation the same. Everything else on the screen displays brightly.

Fortunately (?) it seems to be a known problem with the CCD's on some Canon cameras, and whilst they don't like the 500i as one of the affected models it exactly matches the problem mentioned by Canon where some wiring has apparently come off the CCD due to heat/humidity, so contact Canon and arrange a free repair. Check out a topic called "MV600 Problem" on avforums.com which I found after I'd seen this one - it's up to 29 pages with people reporting the same issue and their (very good) experiences of getting the problem solved by various Canon repair centres.