Camera Spontaneously Reverts to Previous Settings

[Harold Gough]

This is a new problem but I'm not sure how new.

This is usually when I have put the camera down for a few seconds (left switched on) but is is sometimes when I am holding it..

There is a double click, as though the shutter is operating.There is no image or black frame.

The ISO and WB have reverted to a selection I have used in a previous session, possibly on the previous day. This is starting to happen frequently.

It is not a battery issue.

Any suggestions?

Harold

[drmarkf]

Never heard of that one, Harold, but the commonest causes of quirks like that seem to be:

- dodgy SD card (format it, and if that doesn't work, try another for a while)
- incompletely locked-on lens or contaminated/tarnished electrical contacts on the bayonet. Does it happen with all your lenses?

If those don't seem to apply, try a battery-out reset (power on and wait for the body to boot up; open the battery door & take it out and wait 10s; replace battery & close the door & wait for the camera to boot up; switch off, cross fingers and switch back on again).

Finally, try a reset to manufacturer's settings (after noting yours, if you haven't already, and backing them up to a computer).

If all that doesn't work, I fear a Portuguese holiday might be on the horizon.

[Harold Gough]

Never heard of that one, Harold, but the commonest causes of quirks like that seem to be:

- dodgy SD card (format it, and if that doesn't work, try another for a while)
- incompletely locked-on lens or contaminated/tarnished electrical contacts on the bayonet. Does it happen with all your lenses?

If those don't seem to apply, try a battery-out reset (power on and wait for the body to boot up; open the battery door & take it out and wait 10s; replace battery & close the door & wait for the camera to boot up; switch off, cross fingers and switch back on again).

Finally, try a reset to manufacturer's settings (after noting yours, if you haven't already, and backing them up to a computer).

If all that doesn't work, I fear a Portuguese holiday might be on the horizon.

Thanks.

The card appears to work perfectly, although it is rather old.

The battery out reset is interesting, in my case batteries out.

Harold

[drmarkf]

Thanks.

The card appears to work perfectly, although it is rather old.

The battery out reset is interesting, in my case batteries out.

Harold

Are you using a battery grip? I imagine the same electrical contact issues affecting lens bayonets could occur there as well.

[Harold Gough]

Thanks, Mark.

I had suspected the battery grip, as picking the camera up also caused the issue but the buttons on the grip were locked off.

The grip has been on and off too many times for the issue to be the contacts (I will clean they anyway) and it is on the camera except when removed to access the camera battery. I always tighten it. Putting the camera down and hearing the clicks a minute later makes a grip problem unlikely. It looks like a memory issue (camera, not mine).

I removed the grip, turned the camera on and released the battery retaining clip on the body battery, letting the battery spring away from the contacts. With the camera still on, after a pause, I clipped the battery back in.

I tried a few ISO & aperture settings, putting the camera down for a few minutes in between, aperture priority and manual.

It seems to now be cured,

Thanks very much for that.

Harold

[drmarkf]

Great: fingers crossed.
I should patent the 'battery out reset'.

Back in the early days of the E-M1 mki, along with everyone else I was getting random firmware crashes and lockups, and a BOR I found the quickest way to unscrew the software. Eventually of course they debugged it such that crashes/lockups are pretty rare now.

I assume some bit of code loaded in to memory gets corrupted by a passing cosmic ray, and forcing a reload of everything wipes the slate clean.

[wanderer]

I had a little similar trouble with my old E-5. I solved it by removing the battery grip and operating with only one battery.
The other problem I had was sometimes when switching the camera (EM-1 mkII & X) on, it defaulted to F4.0.
After checking, there was a problem with the back plate on the lens (12-100 F4) being a little loose.
It went to Portugal and is OK now.