6d randomly shutting off, battery still showing at half charge.

[Saradesirey]

Wondering if this is a camera or battery issue... I just bought my 6D secondhand in April and sent it to Canon for some repairs... Put the battery back in when I got it home and was tooling around in the settings and it randomly shut off. Thinking it was just my battery being dead, I put it on the charger until it was about 75% charged, popped it in the camera, took some test shots, no issues.

Took it away this weekend and took around 250 photos with the same battery. Was in the middle of taking some macro shots when suddenly, my shutter wouldn't release - the camera had shut off completely, and the battery light was flashing as if the battery was completely dead. Popped the battery out, put it back in, started up normally, and in the battery info still said I have about 53% battery left. Took another three shots, and same thing - complete shut down. Rinse, lather, and repeat, except now all I had to do was back button focus for it to shut itself off again.

Luckily I had another backup battery on me that I just purchased and had charged fully to 100% before leaving and took about 50 photos with no problems so far.

So my question is this... If I don't allow a full charge on a battery, are issues like this common? Is this a battery issue or a camera issue? I would really hope it's a battery problem, because I just sent it out to Canon to have them fix a focusing issue and I would hate to send it back out again for another repair.

[hsbn]

If your back up battery doesn't give you a problem, then it's pretty obvious that the battery is defective.
Even though some defective battery can show it is fully charged, but when after taking a few shots, it will go to zero. If you take it out, and put it back in, it will show you still have some charge left. I've seen this a lot.

[trulandphoto]

Sounds like the battery has reached the end of it's life. I've had LP-E6 batteries become useless after about two years of moderate use. Another sign is when they are not full but go to green almost as soon as put in the charger.

When I pick up a used body I always make sure I have at least one new battery to go along with it.

[TCampbell]

If it's always the same battery then it's mostly likely the battery.  Note however, that if you open the battery door or the memory card door then a powered up camera will immedaitely power down and even if the door is closed again you have to power-cycle the camera to turn it back on.

So if this is happening with random batteries... check that your memory card door and battery door are able to solidly close.  There's a micro-switch on each door that allows the camera to know if the door is closed.