C100: Disaster! Camera Frozen! Read & Learn. Don’t let this happen to You!

nedcam

nedcam

Well-known member
Basically, DO NOT COPY THE SETTINGS FROM A C100 WITH THE LATEST VERSION OF FIRMWARE AND THEN UPLOAD IT TO A C100 WITH AN OLDER VERSION OF FIRMWARE!!!!!! More exclamation points: !!!!!!!!!!!

Remember that! At least it’s a “theory” at Canon’s repair service in Itasca, IL. Here’s what happened: Today I hired a shooter with a C100 to crew with me for a two cam shoot, he had firmware v1.0.1. I have v1.0.4. and I did not ask which version he had, just handed him the card. He inserted my SD card with my settings into his camera, hit upload and THE CAMERA FROZE IN THE MEDIA MODE. Nothing we could do could get it going, even a hard reset with a paper clip. All tricks applied. Nada. Nothing. Clock ticking. Enter Panic Mode!

It was supposed to be a 2 cam shoot but he drove like a bat out of hell to Canon, they had some trick to reset it. Although they have never seen this problem the tech “thought” perhaps it was the difference in firmware. Who knew? I know you’re suppose to have matching firmware for matching cameras but never thought you could crash the camera if the versions were different. Never happened in my Sony or Panasonic days. It didn’t occur to me to ask what f'ing firmware version he had, I was busy unloading and prepping. Maybe it's his switch on the side that changes from Media to Camera? The tech couldn't rule that out.

These things are not cameras anymore, they are computers with a lens stuck on it. Now I'm in the middle of a client not wanting to pay for the 2nd camera and shooter and the shooter wanting payment. I'm not producing, just a cameraman asked to get a second shooter.

Has this happened to anyone else with a C100?

So remember this, pass it on.
 
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nedcam said:
firmware v1.0.1.
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So basically this owner hasn't updated his camera since 2013 and never wanted to move his magnification location with the joystick, have ultra high ISOs, control the menus from the body media buttons, use peripheral illumination correction on more lenses, or have the improved colour science which might have messed up any profiles you were trying to apply anyway, plus probably a bunch of other minor improvements. Talk about an "out of the box" experience.
 
I know lots of people that don't have the latest firmware on their gear, including me. I know that's not a new build, but I always give it a few weeks before I update anything so that issues and bugs can be sorted out first. Never ever update your firmware/software on anything just before you go out on a shoot(i.e: the night before or morning of). I've seen people lose jobs doing that when the gear didn't work on location.

I'm pretty sure my C300 doesn't have the very latest firmware and I know for a fact my F55 doesn't, because I read about some bugs in the builds past v6 that the techs installed on mine this summer. My iPhone 6 is also still on ios8 and my RMBP is still on Mt. Lion. ; )

Neds absolutely right, these are computers with lenses and I've taken the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach when it comes to firmware. Unless it's addressing problems, bugs, etc. in the current firmware that are affecting me or is adding features I need, then I'll sit back and make sure it's stable or just skip it altogether.

Neds also right in that that I would have never thought to ask about camera firmware v# and that making scene files incompatible. Never been an issue with my VariCams or 55. All Files are a different story, but scene files seem unaffected.
 
Here's the rub:

The Reset Hole doesn't do squat! When you are at a live event and the C100 is crashed, you need to straighten a paper clip and be able to do a Factory Reset. Turns out the hole is for decoration only! It would not work! With or without battery, we held for over 15 seconds which the manual suggests, etc. So there we are at a LIVE EVENT, got there way early, and the God Damn reset function won't work to save us!

So they did an Emergency Room fix at Canon, fortunate that we are in a big city with a Canon repair facility in the burbs, but we users in the field should be able to bring our C100 at least back to factory settings when needed IN AN EMERGENCY. So...I don't feel so warm and fuzzy about Canon like I used to. I come from decades of Sony, Arri, Panasonic, Ikegami experience and it seems that Canon tip toed into the video world through their success with DSLR video, which works well when it works, but is not very robust. So they make "cameras" that aren't really tough. How could it be designed to crash and freeze a camera by having two different firmwares? Or maybe it's just the switch, the tech didn't know. However, the reset switch should do what it says: RESET.

Because the Reset hole wouldn't do it's job I'm out $425 which is the rebate for half the day for the other shooter I am giving back to the client! Read on...

A few months ago I inadvertently used the wrong Dtap cable and it blew my C100's mother board for a $700 repair. The tech said there are two fuses in the C100 that cost .07¢ each to protect the mother board but they didn't stop the surge as engineered. So I'm out $700. Why, if I buy a camera for $5000, does Canon put only .14¢ of protection in there? With Panasonics and Sonys when they blow I would go to Radio Shack and for .50¢ buy the type of glass fuse you use in your car. and REPLACE IT MYSELF in ten seconds. If it wasn't for the popularity of the really shallow depth-of-field look in video, Canon would still be doing only still gear and copiers. Eeeesh.....I am really pissed off.

C100 & 300s are fancy toys and make a great image when all works well. However, there's a cost to us users for them to make it at such a cheap price point. They may not seem cheap to some of you but the real cams used to be way above $40K and built like a brick s**t house.
 
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Terrible thing to go wrong... But what was the emergency fix?? how did the do it?
Would pulling the memory battery do the trick??
 
I don't know what Canon did in their facility (I'll ask next week) but they have ways I suppose at bypassing the user functions we have. Never the less, the damn Reset hole should at least work in an emergency.

Not sure what you mean by memory battery. Is it internal? If so, I wouldn't know how to get at it. We did change batts, tried AC power, unplugged the handles, everything we could think of. When we tried powering up in Camera Mode we crossed our fingers and said a voodoo offering I learned in New Orleans during Katrina: "Heechie weeechie snick snak snorem shazzazz", but even that didn't work.

Funny thing was, I was thinking of bringing a back up pro camera just in case the 2nd shooter didn't show up, that's how paranoid I am, but when I looked at the address of the shoot it seemed like an iffy neighborhood and this being Chicago, I didn't want to leave it in my vehicle and felt I wouldn't have room to bring it in, which was the case. But you can never be too paranoid and I should have brought a back up camera and now may do this regularly now knowing the FRAGILITY OF THE C100. Hey, if the back up camera gets stolen I get an insurance check! (after my $1000 deductible).

My ego is hurt. My rep is being the guy you can rely on...Canon really let us down. Canon's engineers of video cameras in some Tokyo factory have no concept of what we need in the field. We need the Reset hole to work 100% of the time!
 
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Um. . .Canon built their success in video based on their DSLRs with video? Do you not remember a little camera called the XL1s that was all the rage in the early 2000s and the XL1 before that? I believe they were making hi8 cams even before that. They've been at it for years.
 
Thanks Remsy for being our phone support! From now on I will always have the manual with me.

And John, I was never a fan of the XL1. In fact, I never used one. Nor a JVC and several other brands. I'm a twenty pounder. When the XL1 was in it's hey day I was still strongly betacam and varicam. When the Sony EX1 & 3 came out THAT was a game changer because the production companies I worked for bought their own, shipped them around and expected us to use them as freelancers, for a major rate cut. I'd say Canon really entered the pro market with the 5D and if memory serves me well, in the first model had video as an afterthought. But the XL1 to me was a prosumer level model and didn't affect me or my market.
 
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Run&Gun said:
I'll sit back and make sure it's stable
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The last update was almost a year and a half ago. I'd say that's enough testing time for even the most conservative user.
I'd also say we won't be getting another update again (for MKI), meaning once you update you won't need to bother again for the life of the camera.
There is a diminishing return over time though, the later updates don't offer much so if you are conservative then don't bother.
But the earlier updates did add some great features which is why I'm surprised that Neds friend never bothered.
 
Sad to hear about your troubles. You are right about 5D Mark II as Canon was also surprised by the popularity of the video function in the 5D II. There was no precedence of video in a DSLR when Canon was making it.

As far as C100 is concerned, Canon had thought that it would be a stepping stone for DSLR users to move into the cinema series. The C100 was branded as Digital Video Camera as opposed to the C300 and C500 which were branded as Digital Cinema Cameras. Canon had not expected that Pros would take to buying the C100. They were pleasantly surprised by the massive adoption.

These days cameras are kind of computers with lot of intelligence, though they are not branded as such. I remember myself opposing Nokia's N95 branding as a computer in India as that would have led to higher duty.

Camera manufacturers as well as other electronic manufacturers have a lot of pressure to crash the time to market ie launch products faster. So we face these kinds of issues. Too bad that as customers we face loss of reputation (which has been built over the years) along with financial hit.
 
Sorry to hear you got stung Ned. I agree with everything you said but I ALWAYS bring a spare camera. It won't be a second C100 body as I don't have the budget, in my case it would be my old 5D MKII body. It wouldn't look as good as the C100 but it would have looked good enough to finish the job. I arrived at your same conclusion years ago, these new cameras are merely computers with lenses attached and stuff can always go wrong at any moment. I bring the 5D MKII body, charged batteries, my Tascam DR60 audio recorder. My C100 lenses and shoulder rig can take care of the 5D MKII and I carry my small HD DP6 monitor. Clients rightly don't care if you experience technical problems, they only care if you effectively capture their event/interview/subject. Always, always, always bring a spare body, multiple lenses, etc. This has saved my butt twice over the past five years, these cameras are cheap and fragile and sometimes do weird things. Having a backup body with you on all shoots will give you a lot of peace of mind. My challenge is that I shoot a lot of green screen and not sure if my 5D MKII would key as well as my C100 with the Ninja Blade but I think with good lighting, I could make it work, at least enough to save a shoot. For me, this is cameraman 101, you can't place your income and career on just one camera body and hope that it will always work. It wasn't your camera that went down, but it just as easily could have been.
 
This week, as a member of the Canon Professional Services Club I have a Gold Membership so they treat me like royalty, and I will make an appointment to test my reset button while I am there, to prove that if I am in an emergency it will work. There have been about a dozen times in my career where I was out in the field and had an electrical issue and had to hit reset or change the fuse. Now that I know the other DP's reset function didn't work I am worried about mine. It feels like when you buy a used car you'd be a fool not to think, "Hope my airbags work."

As to Canon, it's foolish for me to dis them on this forum, dedicated to their disciples. I am in the twilight of a long career so I bought the C100 as a less expensive tool to get the most amount of gigs, for the least amount of investment, which is a tenet of a small biz owner. I do a lot more producing now so I don't have to have the latest and greatest as I used to. If I were younger and still in the game of trying to get DP gigs on the best shows, I'd have to make an investment in something like a Sony F55 with Cabrio lens, plus a Sprinter van, but I can no longer play (financially) at that level, or want to, so every spare cent goes into Fidelity and Vanguard.

When any of you guys are next in NYC, go to Mecca (B&H HQ) and when you enter turn right and get buzzed in to the professional camera department which is off on it's own, separated from the under $8000 cameras in the main lobby. Look at the lines of manufacturers and you'll see Sony, Arri and Panasonic own the real professional space. The C300 is strong for a certain market but hits a ceiling. In hindsight I should have bought the C300 but was new to the Canon line, having lately been with the Panasonic AF100 and HPX 300, I wasn't all that familiar.

And Puredrifting, I did have a 70D with me and put it on a wide establishing shot with the Tokina 11-16, but since it was unmanned the boom op is in the shot half the time plus it's a little soft with that lens. So to me a DSLR isn't like bringing a 2nd adult level camera. And you're right, the clients don't care about our tech issues. Out of the corners of their eyes they could tell we were fretting about something so I finally came over, and said, "I have good news and bad news, the bad news is that one of the cameras has totally crashed and the DP is racing to Canon and hopefully will be back for the 2nd location in the afternoon (he was!), but the good news is that I have I have been a professional cameraman for 36 years and I feel I can easily cover this with just my camera angle." Which was 95.43% true. The way the audience was set up, I couldn't determine what good the other camera was except for reaction shots of the crowd, and that was before our tech crash.

In sum, I wonder if the engineering at Canon suffers somehow in terms of resources allocated. As Indianwilds says, there's a price to pay for racing a model to market. I mean, how can a reset hole not work? How can a crash occur if cameras have different firmware? So I now, even in sketchy neighborhoods, will have to have another $9000 worth of camera hidden in my car in case the C100 craps out. I've been broken into before and have had gear stolen from my van, so it's not something I want to do but now feel I better do
 
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nedcam said:
So I now, even in sketchy neighborhoods, will have to have another $9000 worth of camera hidden in my car in case the C100 craps out. I've been broken into before and have had gear stolen from my van, so it's not something I want to do but now feel I better do
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How is a $2200 camera (used original C100) worth $9000? I gather you're talking about the Panasonic AG-HPX370 listed on your site.

Thing is, at $2200 for a used C100, they're going pretty cheap these days. If you're making around $1k or so as a day rate and want to maintain a good rep, seems like having a backup for just $2200 (two days of work) would make sense, and wouldn't be as high a risk as bringing a bulky and more expensive HPX370 to hide in your car whenever you need a backup camera. Even cheaper a Panasonic AF-100 goes for about $1100 on Ebay, or a Canon 70D new for $1000 which could both work as relatively cheap backup cameras. [Edit: On second look, I see you already have a 70D.]

Then again, since you're insured with a $1000 deductible and already have an HPX370, maybe that solution does make the most sense as a backup cam.


For myself, about 70% of my shoots are already using 2-3 C100s, and typically I'm only contracted/expected to bring one less than I actually use on the shoot, so if one goes down my client won't care too much if the three camera shoot turns into a two camera shoot. I do have a Panasonic GH2 which blends together well with the C100s in good lighting if I do need a backup camera am I expected to bring three cameras.

For one camera shoots, it depends on the shoot, such as if it's low paid, nearby my house, can be easily rescheduled, etc., then I may not bring a backup C100. If it's well paid, far from my house, etc., then I'll bring a backup. I had one shoot where it was 1 hr 30 minutes away, and when I arrived at the location, the PA I was shooting with said the production company we were shooting for wanted two cameras instead of the one they had originally asked for; fortunately I had a backup on hand. I didn't have a backup tripod on hand, but I did happen to have an extra tripod head and light stands in my car, which I attached together and worked out since they only needed a static shot. Now a days I typically keep two tripods in my car 24/7 and a third tripod in my main camera bag, so I've always got backup tripods as well.

Haven't had any glitches with my cameras. The first camera I bought was the Canon XH-A1s which came out before DSLRs became big, so I'd agree with Josh Bass in that Canon started with pro video earlier than DSLRs. Maybe not at the level of shooting you were at at the time, but lots of professionals (people doing video for a living) were using XL1s and XL2s (first camera I started on) which cost around $4000, which is more than a C100 Mark I costs these days.

I think Canon has one of the best reputations for reliability. I'd say better than Sony and Red do. Sony FS7 had tons of quirks when it first came out, Sony A7R II has reports of overheating in 4K and speculation that A7S II will do the same. I don't recall ever hearing as much gripe about the C100 and C300 in terms of reliability as I have heard about from Sony and Red cameras. Can't say I've heard of many problems with the F5 and F55, though.


nedcam said:
Because the Reset hole wouldn't do it's job I'm out $425 which is the rebate for half the day for the other shooter I am giving back to the client! Read on...

A few months ago I inadvertently used the wrong Dtap cable and it blew my C100's mother board for a $700 repair.

C100 & 300s are fancy toys and make a great image when all works well. However, there's a cost to us users for them to make it at such a cheap price point. They may not seem cheap to some of you but the real cams used to be way above $40K and built like a brick s**t house.
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It seems a bit silly that you're complaining about losing $1125 ($425 + $700) because you didn't spend $40k on a real camera. Aside from that you can charge more and make more money from a $40k camera (assuming one has the client base to support that), purely from a maintenance and refunding the client due to unreliability perspective ($1125), it sounds to me more like you saved $33,000 by not getting a more reliable $40k camera, not to mention that maintenance on a $40k camera generally costs more than on a $5k camera.

Also, it's actually pretty cheap and easy to build a brick s**t house around your C100 camera. Your clients may not like the smell, but at least your camera will survive when the s**t hits the fan.
 
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Josh Bass said:
Um. . .Canon built their success in video based on their DSLRs with video? Do you not remember a little camera called the XL1s that was all the rage in the early 2000s and the XL1 before that? I believe they were making hi8 cams even before that. They've been at it for years.
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They haven't been at it at a professional/broadcast level…(their video cameras) XL1 was not a professional camera nor any of the other handycams they've cranked out over the years. At least not in the sense that Ned and others like me see it and are used to.

One of my biggest gripes with the C's is their lack of professional build quality and features. And as I've said, there are people that have Canons ear that told them the same thing. IF you want to play with the big boys at this level and be taken seriously, you need to build your cameras and gear to a certain minimum level.
 
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