Canon 6d shutter failure problem

[bbstudio]

Hi everyone, 

I am having some problems with my canon 6d.

I am a professional photographer and I do mostly studio workwith it.

Lately i've been having issues with my shutter (at least looks thath way).

When I use studio lights the curtain appears in many of the shots in a randomly way.

I went to Canon official service and they replaced the shutter (it was an expensive replacement). But now I am having the same issue.

It doesn't seem to happen when I test the camera with natural light though. Which confuses me a lot.

Does anyone have any recomendations or educated guess about another thing that my cause the problem.

Thanks in advance to everyone.

EXAMPLE:

[diverhank]

This looks like the classic mis-timing between curtains movement and the flash duration.  You probably know all of this but I will repeat for those who may not know.

For shutter speeds faster than the camera flash sync speed (typically 1/200), the camera second curtain starts moving almost immediately after the first curtain…so the light hitting the sensor at one time is a swath of light (curtain opening) smaller than the size of the sensor.  Multiple swaths of light (as the two curtains traverse) will hit the sensor to make up for the whole image.  This is fine if you don’t use flash (natural light).  With flash since the flash duration is so short, only one or two swaths of light are lit up by the flash, you end up with a lighted band as shown in your picture.

Normally Canon prevents this from happening by two things – 1. Limit the shutter speed to 1/200 or slower and 2. Allows High Speed Sync on the flash.

In High speed sync mode, the flash emits a series of flashes matching the swaths of lights so everything is properly exposed.  What I don’t get is how you were able to bypass # 1 without the high speed sync.  I’ve been trying to do this for my teaching materials without much success.

Theoretically, it is possible to get this with shutter speed slower than 1/200 for mistiming of strobes duration and triggering…what you need to do is to adjust the flash duration and timing of the trigger.

[taconite]

I'm also having this exact same problem with my chinese flash triggers.  It got so bad on a job last week that I had to drop down to 1/80 for the entire day.  Thank God for IS in my lens or I would have been screwed. 

To original poster:  did you ever find out what the cause of the problem was?  My 6D Mk1 is  6 yrs old but has been infrequently used, so I doubt the shutter is dying. I think it may either be the chinese flash triggers or the chinese flashes (Voking).  I also use Canon and even sometimes Nikon speedlites, not sure if I remember the issue happening with them or not.

...So, if you can post an update I'd appreciate it!

[ebiggs1]

"I'm also having this exact same problem with my chinese flash triggers."

Take the camera outside on a sunny day and try it at the same SS.  If it works as it should, it works.  Your "something" else is faulty or incorrect. If you see the same thing in the daylight photos, your shutter is failing.

[bbstudio]

Mine was actually the shutter and I had to change it... but mine was used a lot.

Do what they told you in the prior comment. try the same shutter speed without anything and check if the curtain shows up.

Good luck!

[ebiggs1]

"... but mine was used a lot."

This is a justifiable cause but it isn't any proof.  Most shutters go for many thousands of clicks. A half million clicks happens!  Some go for just a few and fail.

[jonny787b]

I also have the 6D. My problem turned out to be with LED equipment and not the camera body itself. Some cheap LEDs aren't constant like a traditional bulb, but are actually strobing at such a high rate it looks constant to the naked eye. Similar to a computer monitor or TV (refresh rate/hrz).

After troubleshooting (pun) other things with different light sources my problem went away. My 6D was back to nomal. After messing with my LED light source, I got away with having some clean images with shutter speeds 1/100th or slower, slow enough not to capture the mid-strobe and have a fully lit frame.

Your problem sounded similar to mine so I thought I would share. I hope this helps!