Hi folks,

Recent convert from an EX1 to the 7d. Was on a 2 camera shoot recently and towards the beginning of the day we had rolled a nice fat 10 minute clip and when we paused, one of the cameras flashed a "busy" message on the screen. The message stayed on for several minutes...we then tried and turning the camera on and off. Even after switching the camera off, the camera didn't power down. Only after popping the battery did the camera come back to life. And, as you can guess, the footage was nowhere to be found. Luckily it was a pretty scripted interview that we were able to politely ask the talent to back up. No other issues the rest of the day. I'd love to understand the problem....I'm guessing a bad CF card? We had really just started shooting so I don't think it was a heat issue....especially due to the fact that we had no other heat issues during the 3 hour shoot.

Any other input would be helpful!

Jamie

Not enough information! What card and what spec is it?

Sounds like either a bad card or very likely just a slow card. I use Sandisc 45MBps or above spec cards (typically UDMA, 60MBps specs). Also, I make sure I format the cards in the camera every time (rather than just delete clips) and have never had a problem like this.

Kingston Technology Company - Flash Memory - CompactFlash Ultimate 600x (http://www.kingston.com/flash/cfu_600x.asp)

Thanks for the reply Andy, the link above is the card that I had in the camera at the time. This one *should* be fast enough. As you suggest, we were formatting each time we swapped cards.

Thanks again!

Kingston Class (6) SDHC media had several instances of being unable to keep up with Canon and Nikon DSLRs in video mode. Canon techs advised some over the phone to switch to SanDisk Extreme III.

Problems went away.

Kingston used to have a pretty good rep. Can't say this is your problem with CF cards but I stick with SanDisk. Also latest firmware update for the 7D addressed a few problems the 7D was having with media cards, even some SanDisk. You might check your firmware version and go to Canon's website to see if you have the latest version. I've seen reports that those issues had been corrected.

Appreciate it Bruce....I'll stick with the Sandisk cards.

Thanks