Camera not working!

[Don Palomaki]

Was it Videonics that had the following on their web site? "The difference between an amateur and a pro is the amateur shows you ALL his photos/video."

The Standby/Lock lever is an artifact of the handi-cam form factor. It was NOT used on the XL1, or the H8 L1/L2 series, But was on the GL1/2 from which the XH more or less evolved. Newer consumer models (e.g, HV-20) are too small for the lever.

I suspect it is there and works the way it does because more people wanted it than do not want it.

[Bill Pryor]

I think it's there because nobody ever got around to saying, "Take the damn thing off--nobody uses it."

[Kris Bird]

I use it all the time ;) Flip it with my thumb when I don't need the cam active. Never use the wheel except when switching modes.

[Bruce S. Yarock]

We were shooting a wedding yesterday, and I had my A1 on my new Indicam, doing tracking shots, and following the bridal party duing their entrance. Just before the bride starte her entrabce, the A1 shut down. I mean DEAD...nothing. Luckilly we had three other cameras rolling.
I ran over to my case and grabbed another battery. Nothing. Tried two more batteries and still nothing. I then shot the rest of the ceremony with my H1.
later in the reception, just for the hell of it, I tried the A1 and bingo, it worked. This morning, I tried it with all 9 of my different Canon batteries, and it worked with all of them.
Any ideas???
Bruce S. Yarock
www.yarock.com

[Daniel Park]

Hope I don't insult your intelligence here, but the only thing I can think of is that perhaps you had your standby/lock switch inadvertently set to lock.

cheers, d.

[Bruce S. Yarock]

Daniel,
It's in standby. I had an XL2 and now have an H1, and don't think i've ever put any in "lock". I wish it were that simple, but my gut feeling is there's something wrong with the camera. I think I'll send it back to Canon before risking using it at another wedding. I was really curious to see if anyone else had the same problem.
thanks
Bruce S. yarock
www.yarock.com

[Richard Alvarez]

Well, I'd say it was a main fuse problem, except that it 'came back to life'. So yeah, sounds like a trip to Canon is in order. At the very least, you'll be buying some peace of mind.

Man, I HATE unreproduceable errors like that.

[Don Palomaki]

Try reproduce the error by doing a lot of shooting around the home/studio (perhaps using a similar setup, but not on money shoots, to see if you can reproduce the problem. If you can't, it is unlikely Canon can either.

These problem that go away mysteriously tend to be something like a piece of dirt under a contact, a wayward external controller, or a simple but easy to overlook under pressure operator error as suggested above. (BTW: Did you try the reset button when it happened?)

Just a thought, the act of making some external connection to the machine, perhaps to the firewire or lanc port, while the camcorder processor was in a very specific transient state may have cause the internal processor to hang - a bit like can happen with a PC, and a reboot was needed. Many devices prefer that connections to I/O ports be made while the device is in a specific state - typically off.

[Bruce S. Yarock]

Don,
I tried all of the batteries this am, and had no problem. I'll try your idea and do some extended shooting around the house and see if it happens again.
I couldn't hit "reset" because the camera was dead (unless I'm missing something...Is there another "reset" button?)
The only thing I had attached was a 10 watt Canon light on the shoe. Since I was flying it on the indicam, my hands weren't even touching the camera.
back to the drawing board...
Bruce S. yarock
www.yarock.com

[John B. Coons]

EXACTLY the same thing happened with my XH-A1 – I was shooting soccer in SD – maybe 15 minutes into the first tape with 5 or 6 stop/starts of the button when the LCD went totally dark. My first thought was that I had switched it to lock, but I had not. I quickly changed batteries, but it would not power on. I went back to the original battery which was fully charged before I started, and it still would not work. Then a miracle occurred, and everything worked. It happened again 10 minutes later – when I went to lock then back to standby it came on. The next night was another soccer game (maybe 60 minutes total recording) and it failed again… lock/standby fixed it. A week later I shot an entire game with no problems.

I next had 2 horse shows to video, but did not want to dust off my XL/1s because I am addicted to the HX-A1 and have faith in miracles. Only one “hang” in the 120 minutes of video for the first show. No problems during the second show… maybe 140 minutes. (Most segments of the horse show were only 2 minutes in length).

I am planning on videoing my wall for an entire tape to see if it freezes, but in production it now seems to work like it did for the first 15 hours or so I used it before the problem surfaced.

Only thing attached to my camera is a Rode mic via XLR.

[Bruce S. Yarock]

John,
Do you plan to send it back to Canon, or are you going to hope it doen't happen again? I'm going to try Dons' suggetion first.
Bruce S. yarock
www.yarock.com

[Terry Thompson]

Bruce,

I don't know your shooting situation but cameras have a condensation sensor that will allow you to start shooting but as condensation appears in the camera it will shut down and not restart until the camera and the ambient temperature are closely the same.

For instance...if you had the camera in a cool spot (like an air conditioned car) and took it out into warm or hot air (usually outside) the moisture in the air could condense on the colder metal camera parts like water condenses on the outside of a glass of ice water. This is even more likely in high humidity areas like Florida etc. Always let your camera sit a bit before using in order to keep this problem from happening. You might even open the tape door to let the inside camera temperature normalize.

You probably already know about this but others might not so I thought I would include it in this discussion.

Smooth Shooting,

Tery
Indicam

[John B. Coons]

Bruce,
I do not think I will send it to Canon… at least not yet. I have a one day horse show this Saturday (maybe an hour+ of video in 2 minute segments), so I will see how it performs. I will next try videoing my wall and see if it can run an hour. I do not think the condensation problem Terry pointed out applies to my failures – at least not the last one at the horse show, as my camera had been on a tripod outside for several hours in dry weather and failed a minute into videoing (maybe the 30th 2 minute clip I shot that day). Has your A1 only failed one time?

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Daniel Park

... perhaps you had your standby/lock switch inadvertently set ...

Originally Posted by Bruce S. Yarock

I had an XL2 and now have an H1, and don't think i've ever put any in "lock".

The XH is different from the XL cameras... the XL series doesn't have the "lock" switch that the XH does. The XH will go into standby mode even if you've never touched that switch, and based on what you're describing, it sounds like it has simply gone into standby mode. And if you don't recall ever changing that switch then I can practically guarantee that's what happened.

If this situation ever occurs again, just cycle that switch (it surrounds the rec / pause button on the hand grip). Then you will have properly identified the cause of the shutdown, plus you can prevent it from happening again by disabling the auto standby mode from within the Custom Function menu. Hope this helps,

[Bruce S. Yarock]

Terry,
It wasn't condensation. I've shot with this and all of my previous cameras in hideous contrating temperatures (freezing ac inside to sweltering humidity outside, and back inside) and none ever shut down. The only problems were fogged lens and viewfinder.

Chris,
It shut down while I was shooting the bridal party enter. I might have paused for a couple of minutes, but would that cause it to go into standby and shut down? I then tried to re power the camera with the main dial and it was still dead. Exctly how could I replicate what you're talking about to see if that's the cause?
Bruce S. Yarock
ww.yarock.com