[Back to normal (I suppose)] 100D liveview messed up.

Started by Walter Schulz, November 22, 2019, 05:16:34 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Walter Schulz

Is the doctor in?
I'm traveling with 100D (planning to come back end of March 2020) and just a few hours ago liveview went nuts.
Build in use at the time was crop_rec_4k_2018.Jul22.100D101 (by jenkins@nightly)

Changened lenses after some video shots (mlv_rec + mlv_snd), went to liveview for some stills and a bright screen was shown with ML status bars top and bottom. Brightness didn't change with aperture/exposure time/ISO. Sometimes power off won't work.
Tried resetting to ML defaults, restoring Canon settings, pressing SET at startup, running cam without card, with different builds, with different cams.
I started cam in M mode, Tv, Av and tried battery (only on with me) and external power supply.

- Most of the time screen is bright when starting LV with ML status bars. Pressing LV button switches off LV, pressing again brings back bright screen with status bars.
- With bright screen on I press Play button and last pic shows up. Pressing LV button again, screen shows last pic (normal brightness) with ML status bars. Pressing LV button again -> Canon menu as it should be. Pressing LV again: Black screen with ML status bars.

Sometimes I manage to softbrick the cam. Haven't found out why and when yet.
Looks like non-LV pics are working fine.

@alex: UTC-5 here (if it matters)

EDIT: Movie mode LV is laggy (looks like fps override) and freezes at times.
EDITEDIT: Got LV back in photo mode. Sluggish. Looks like some serious fps override. Useable, still.
3rdEDIT: in Movie tab FPS override was turned off but numbers to the right were in the 59.xxx area! Canon setting: PAL 1080@25 ... Changed to NTSC and changed 1080p modes. Numbers are back to normal.
Funny: Let cam rest in Canon menu while I wrote, switched back to LV and everything looks ok now. No lag anymore. Do I have to understand what was going on?


a1ex

If the behavior was there with Canon firmware ("pressing SET at startup" or "running cam without card"), my best guess would be an intermittent issue on the electrical side (circuits related to image sensor, likely a poor contact). That is, if now it's working again, it will probably fail again sooner or later. Temperature (variations) might affect this, too.

I can get a log of what exactly happens on Canon's side, but not much more. I'm not able to drive the sensor directly (e.g. from bootloader, without Canon code) yet, in order to troubleshoot it further, but such a test program could be very useful. So far, I've stopped troubleshooting as soon as the error message was clearly about image capture, assuming hardware issue.

One of these builds might work for logging:
https://builds.magiclantern.fm/jenkins/view/Experiments/job/startup-log/
https://builds.magiclantern.fm/jenkins/view/Experiments/job/startup-log-mpu/

If it fails again, it would be probably a good candidate for learning how to diagnose/repair this kind of defects. I'm tempted to take a physical look at the cam when you get back to EU, but... it's probably overkill for you to carry a paperweight during your entire trip. Cameras with image sensor defects pop up every now and then, so I might as well get one of those.

Walter Schulz

Yes, there is a ton of malfunctions. Will try to replace this one with an ML supported cam ASAP (and this might take a while).