Canon 5D Classic CF access lamp doesn't stop blinking even after the camera has long been turned off

[chris997]

"Hi everyone, I recently got a Canon 5D Classic, and I’ve noticed that the red access lamp under the control wheel blinks even when the camera is turned off. This seems to drain the battery overnight. The issue happens with all my CF cards, but temporarily stops when I remove and reinsert a card. However, when I power the camera on and off again, the red light blinking returns. My batteries work fine in other cameras (20D & 40D), and so do the CF cards (work fine on 5d mk3, mk2, 40d, 20d and olympus evolt 500) so I tested everything on everything I can and formatted them several times with several different cameras

I've checked the CF card slot for bent pins and also tried removing the battery for a longer period, but the issue persists. I hope it is just a user mistake and not a firmware bug or a failing internal component since firmware uodates are no longer available from canon and a friend of mine did roast its 50d with a firmware update so I would rather not risk that and a hardware repair would be to expensive for a camera I paid 70€.

I doubt that it would be a faulty cf card slot since the camera behaves completely normal if turned on, it even goes normally to sleep mode and the access lamp does not blink, only the moment I switch it to off it starts blinking again (in about 1 second intervals). The only thing I noticed today was one shot after which it showed an error, so I switched the camera off and on again (I do not remember the error number) and the camera worked fine after this, sadly I only noticed the red light blinking after I was wondering why the battery was drained (which even with the bp511 does not happen that fast on my 40d and 20d and the days before I always left the camera switch on the on position until I got home and removed the batteries to charge them. So unfortunately I cannot tell if the problem has occurred since this error or not, but since the camera is working fine besides when turned off and that I have a similar situation error with my 20d and nothing happened after that I doubt also that the problem lies here but I am not also no expert.

Does anyone else have experience with this issue?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[p4pictures]

What card capacity are you trying. I think the EOS 5D classic is limited to smaller cards only. If you are using a card like 64GB that could be the problem. 

[deebatman316]

It is indeed limited to smaller cards just like the EOS 40D is as well. I usually use 4GB or 8GB CF cards in that camera any bigger the camera has problems with it.

[chris997]

Hi, thanks for the amswer, I tried a 1gb, a 2gb a 4gb and two 32gb one udma7 the other udma (1 I suspect) the other 3 do not mention the standard but I dont think the capacity is the problem, but I was aware of that issue also that it would format a 32gb card to 4gb therefore I did not format the 32gb in the classic but before inserting them.

And as a little update I now tried removing the bp511 battery and the clock battery and letting it sit for about 30min, that did not help eighter, the only current work around is eigher to let the battery door or the cf card door permanently open or in case of the cf card door what works is letting it open for about 5min while the switch is in the off position when closing it again the led blinks once but stops after that one blink, however this only works when the door is left open long enough (30 seconds for example is not enough...) and to be clear, the problem reoccurs as soon as the camera is turned on again and then turned back off (so I would need to leave the door open for several minutes every time I want to shut off the camera).

Thanks again for your time and answer.

[chris997]

Hi thank you too. As mentioned in my answer to p4pictures, I tried several cf cards with several capacities ranging from 1gb to 32gb. However besides the 5d problem I can confirm that my 32gb cards do work without problem in my 40d as well as in my 20d and they both where capable to fill up the whole 32gb and also recognise them as such, even 128gb did work (maybe dependent on firmware?)

[deebatman316]

Yes certain cameras required a firmware to be able to use large capacity cards. At the time large capacity meant 16GB. But obviously now cards can be found up to 1 Terabyte now.