6D MkII - Picture preview and Live view is just a black screen

[R3GUL8OR]

Morning guys,

  So the search I did on this didn't really pull up anything that was exactly like this, so wanted to post my issue first while I try to troubleshoot.

   Everything on my Mk2 was great about 2 weeks ago. I pulled the battery out, put it on the charger and didn't put it back in till yesterday (mostly cause I forgot about it -- so the camera has been without it's main battery for about 2 weeks). I formatted my SD card via the camera and everything was looking fine. Took a few shots and when I went to preview the picture, it was a black screen. I pushed the zoom button and the icons for it came up, so I knew the screen was on. Before anyone asks, yes the lens cap was removed during all of this 🙂 I took about a good 50 pictures before I checked. There were a small handful (like maybe 3-4) that actually did show up on the LCD. But as I scrolled through the rest, nothing. 

   I switched it over to live mode and the screen was still black. However, I half press the shutter and the screen comes on as it focuses, but then shuts right off after it gets it's quick AF. Almost acting like the face detection is enabled -- but I don't know if that would affect the picture preview?

Any ideas? When I get home, I am going to try to check the firmware (worth a shot) and double check the rubber guard on the eye piece to see if it moved or something. I haven't reset the settings yet only because I had a lot of settings changed before this issue and wasn't sure if that would actually address this (not sure of the correlation). Other than that, I am really out of ideas on what to try or look at. So any help would be awesome.

[RobertTheFat]

A wild guess would be that you've inadvertently turned on some power-saving option. Consult the manual and/or try resetting all options to factory default. (And no, I don't think that leaving the battery out for a while will have done that.)

[R3GUL8OR]

OK, I will take a look. I was thinking maybe some power-save option got turned on, but I hadnt really touched anything in the settings for awhile so wasn't sure if that was a possibility or not. Thank you sir! 

[Waddizzle · Accepted solution]

Check and compare exposure settings on good and bad files. Your shots might be way underexposed. Remove any lens filters and test it again.

Reset the camera back to factory defaults.

[CaliforniaDream]

On the "Setup Settings 1 menu" on the 1D there is a "Save settings to memory card" option so that you can restore options after a clear.  Don't know if it is available on your 6D.   If you decide to check if the clear all settings would fix this might be an option.

[Waddizzle]

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@CaliforniaDream wrote:

On the "Setup Settings 1 menu" on the 1D there is a "Save settings to memory card" option so that you can restore options after a clear.  Don't know if it is available on your 6D.   If you decide to check if the clear all settings would fix this might be an option.

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So far, the “Save Settings” feature seems to be exclusive to the 1D Series.

[R3GUL8OR]

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@Waddizzle wrote:
Check and compare exposure settings on good and bad files. Your shots might be way underexposed. Remove any lens filters and test it again.

Reset the camera back to factory defaults.

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yup. SOB. Looked at the histogram and it was WAY underexposed when on shutter priority. When I turned the camera on and went to TV, I noticed the ISO was locked at 400. Which is odd cause usually I have the ISO set to auto when I'm trying to get 1/2000 shots. Tried to scroll the ISO and couldn't get it to move for some reason. Did a settings reset and I can scroll the ISO again and can go back to auto now. Don't know why it got stuck there. Kinda odd. I should have caught that though 😞 <smh>. I have used up my dumb moment of the week now. 😕 lol

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction though 🙂 

[Waddizzle]

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@R3GUL8OR wrote:

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@Waddizzle wrote:
Check and compare exposure settings on good and bad files. Your shots might be way underexposed. Remove any lens filters and test it again.

Reset the camera back to factory defaults.

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yup. SOB. Looked at the histogram and it was WAY underexposed when on shutter priority. When I turned the camera on and went to TV, I noticed the ISO was locked at 400. Which is odd cause usually I have the ISO set to auto when I'm trying to get 1/2000 shots. Tried to scroll the ISO and couldn't get it to move for some reason. Did a settings reset and I can scroll the ISO again and can go back to auto now. Don't know why it got stuck there. Kinda odd. I should have caught that though 😞 <smh>. I have used up my dumb moment of the week now. 😕 lol

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction though 🙂 

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Congratulations.  Operator errors are the best kind of problems.  The cost to repair them are ZERO.

BTW, I do most of my shooting with ISO set to Auto, but I do so in M mode.  The camera can be set to control exposure by controlling the exposure triangle based upon various algorithms.

The camera body can be set to control all three legs of the exposure triangle, any two, or any one leg. My preference is to only allow the cameras to at most control only one leg, because I do not like the algorithms that it uses most of the time to correct exposure.

When I am shooting wildlife or sports, I want control of shutter speed and aperture at all times.  So, my preference is for the camera to control ISO to give me a proper exposure of 0 Ev.  I do this by using M mode with ISO set to Auto.  Many times the camera’s metering system can be fooled by shooting conditions, and I need AEC, such as shooting a bird against a sky background.

Most cameras do not allow Automatic Exposure Compensation in Manual mode, but the many of the latest models DO allow it when the ISO is set to Auto.  You can reprogram the [SET] button so that when it is held down, you can use the main wheel to dial in AEC, just as quickly and easily as you would shutter speed.  Hope this helps.