HowTo? troubleshoot 5d2 with intermittent issue of not powering on?

[l_d_allan]

Summary:

• I've got a Canon 5d2 that I originally purchased in May, 2010 that may be developing problems.
• Wouldn't turn ON this morning.
• No lights or LCD activity when on/off lever moved from OFF to PART-ON or FULL ON.
• Intermittent ... sometimes LCD will come on when CF card isn't installed ... every tenth time or so?
• My uninformed speculation is that this isn't related to ML, but the behavior is possibly similar to bricked camera from ML.
• Plus ML gurus may have a LOT of experience with mis-behaving cameras that act "bricked".
• At this point, appreciate guidance on how to troubleshoot, and how to proceed with Mack extended warranty to maximize odds of having repair covered rather than declined.
• Some concern that if I send it in for warranty work (extended), it will intermittently work fine once received by Canon / Mack extended warrant. It'll come back with same problem(s).
• "What's changed?" Nothing comes to mind, other than this is the first time it's been used in cool/cold weather in some time.

More info and trouble-shooting I've done so far (may be TMI and/or TL;DR  ... sorry)
What happened this morning:

• Attempting to take star-trails pre-dawn ... about 4:00 am with ~7:00 sunrise. About 34F degrees (not freezing, but chilly)
• Aftermarket (non-oem) battery (made by POWWER from Adorama or BhPhoto or from Amazon?) had been charging and was "Full Green" 100% SOC (state of charge)
• Put 5d2 in padded camera fanny-pack to let it gradually cool off about 15 minutes prior to heading to nearby park
• Once in park, put 5d2 on tripod and attempted to turn on. Nothing. Nada. No power lights or LCD activity.
• Attempted with original Canon oem LP-E6 battery that has "Recharge Performance" of "Slightly Degraded". Also nothing.
• Put camera back in padded fanny pack and brought back inside.
• Proceeded with back-up T3i/600D to take star-trails

Most of the time, neither LP-E6 battery brings camera to life ... Canon original and aftermarket made by POWWER.

• Both batteries have been working fine.
• Both charge to "Full Green" in Canon charger.
• Both show 99+% SOC (state of charge) once done with charging.
• The POWWER after-market battery show three bars for recharge performance, which user manual indicates is "Fine"
• "Recharge Performance" of the original Canon battery .. two bard (Slight degradation)
• Removed CF card, removed lens, and put on body-cap to simplify.

Been using MagicLantern (ML) latest/greatest nightly-builds for about a year or so.

• 5d2 had been working perfectly the previous day with the same ML firmware
• Swapped out CF card with another that didn't have ML firmware on it. Still dead.
• Canon may not like that camera has had ML installed. I think they can detect that some AutoBoot flag is set on the camera. Or not?
• At times, I've had ML nearly brick the 5d2 and my T3i/600D with unhappy nightly builds, but these have been resolved with some head-scratching and wrestling. May have been operator error on my part ... PEBKAC.

After an hour or so inside, the 5d2 will intermittently turn on partially

• With no CF card, and aftermarket POWWER battery, camera has come to life several times
• Only about 1/10th of the time I turn switch from OFF to ON
• Able to check "Battery Recharge Performance" and observe 3 bars (Fine) with POWWER battery
• Whew ... at first.
• But haven't been able to get ON with CF card installed ... at least at first when "boot'ing"
• After about 10+ tries, about to get ON with Canon-oem battery and no CF card.
• Two bars for "Recharge performance" using original Canon oem LP-E6 (manual indicates "Slightly Degraded")
• Once camera comes on, able to open CF door (which turns camera partially OFF ... power LED off and LCD off)
• Leave ON/OFF switch in "FULL ON" position
• Install CF card
• CF card recognized ... seems to be working ok
• After about half an hour, camera won't come back on. Acting Dead again. Drat.

About a month ago, something similar happened, but I'm fuzzy on the specifics

• POWWER after-market battery had been charging, and was "Full Green"
• Put battery back in camera. This may have been the night before or as heading out.
• Checked camera before driving away as a "last sanity check"
• Camera dead, like battery was dead (glad I checked)
• Put back in charger, and the status light flashing may have indicated nearly drained
• Used original Canon oem battery, which was fine
• Seemed like camera may have drained battery by just being in the camera overnight
• Once POWWER battery fully charged, has been fine for the past month or so ... until yesterday

Camera has been used quite a bit by a non-professional, but "serious hobby'ist"

• Utility included within ML shows about 190,000 shutter activations
• Which includes going into LiveView mode
• Canon specs indicate shutter is expected to last 150,000 shutter activations.
• Stats collected by ML indicated that "average" 5d2 goes about 350,000 shutter activations before dying. Whew.
• Camera almost never used for video
• When first acquired, somewhat ignorant about what are "best practices" for longevity
• Did some experiments with videos, and some were long and may have over-heated camera
• Mea culpa ... camera has been dropped twice since I've owned it
• about 4 feet each time onto carpet.
• both times, didn't seem to faze the camera, continued working fine
• possible some kind of "accelerometer" within the camera could detect it has been dropped
• near end of warranty, and after first drop, focus screen fell out and was fixed under warranty
• I did have to go back and worth with Canon support via email to get it covered under warranty
• Which I infer that indicated that a "has been dropped accelerometer" hadn't been triggered. Or not?

Have extended warranty from Mack camera, purchased at time of original order.

• Need to track it down ... ASAP ... and check for sure if it covers 3 years, 3 additional years, 5 years
• Mack may object if ML firmware used?
• Concern that if I send camera in for warranty work, it will behave when they test it.

Best guess? battery terminal connection or on/off switch or power supply?

[a1ex]

TLDR, but did you follow the warnings in red from the install guide? (especially the one about not removing the card too fast)

[l_d_allan]

Thanks for the follow-up.

My inference is that you are referring to the Install.pdf for the 2.3 stable release:

Code Select Expand

After opening the card door, always wait for LED confirmation (or for 5 seconds) before
removing the card!!! During that period, Canon firmware accesses the card without
turning on the LED, and if you remove the card too early, the camera will freeze and
will drain the battery. Exception: 550D users don't have to wait.

It's possible that has happened in the past. I do recall once that I was surprised the battery was unexpectedly drained, but that was at least a month or so ago. Generally, my "work-flow" of getting files from the CF card onto the computer avoids the problem mentioned. I try to be pretty organized and methodical about going from one photo session to another.

As far as this morning, my recollection is the camera was working fine the day before for several hundred pictures. I'd copied the .cr2's onto the computer, and started post-processing. The battery went to the charger as soon as I got back home. My practice is to not format the card until just before another photo session, to minimize the chance of neglecting to get images off the camera.

IIRC, I put the freshly charged battery (Full Green) from the charger to the camera this morning, and headed outside to the park 4 doors away. Usually, I do a last sanity check to turn it ON to see if the camera is alive, but didn't do that until I got to the location for the star-trails. That's when I noticed it was Dead ... unable to turn on. Fortunately, I was only a short walk away from my backup T3i.

My point is that I don't think your (much appreciated) suggestion applies. The battery was fully charged. When I got back to the house and put it in the charger, it flashed several times, and then the charger showed Solid Green, indicated Fully charged. So I don't think it had been drained.

Again, I have my doubts that this is ML related. At this point, I'm trying to do the best job of trouble-shooting so I don't have to sent it in for extended warranty work. I dread getting it back with "it worked fine for us". Or "repair-under-warranty-declined" because of [fill-in-the-blank].

If anything, I speculate it is the ON-OFF switch, the battery contact, or the power supply. My next step is to a local camera shop that may be willing to try a "known-to-be-good" LP-E6 in the camera.

[a1ex]

When it doesn't boot, leave the power switch on and the card inside, remove the battery and put it back. If it boots, it's not the power switch.

[l_d_allan]

Made good progress yesterday, and it looks like the 5d2 is ok. Whew.

I was able to purchase an aftermarket non-oem battery from a local camera store, and it seems to be working more or less fine. Whew. I'll monitor it closely for the next several weeks.

Pricey and rather underpowered compared to on-line deals, but I suppose worth it ($50 and only 1820 mAh compared to others online with ~2600 mAh ... although those may be inflated).

Once fully recharged, the 5d2 seems to consistently boot. The 5d2 won't consistently boot from the original LP-E6 that came with the camera (now 3.5+ years old) or another non-oem LP-E6 I got several years ago for cold night shooting.

Another issue that may very well have contributed was that my main 16gb CF card may have gotten corrupted. Even before getting the new battery, I was able to more often (less intermittent) boot with several older 4gb CF cards with and without ML.  Puzzling.

I did format the 16gb card on my PC with a card-reader, which I don't recall helping. Then I reformatted the 16gb card with an older 50D that also uses CF cards. That seemed to help.

Now the 5d2 generally boots with the 16gb card with the latest NB installed. It does seem more prone to wanting the battery removed and put back in.

I will definitely be more careful to not remove the CF card until 5+ seconds after powering down. It does seem possible that I wasn't doing that consistently in the past. That may have stressed the older batteries that were near end-of-life, and pushed them over the edge. My bad?