EOS 60D not imaging for exposures longer than 1/60th sec.

[jalbersh]

I may have just ruined my DSLR! I tried blowing the dust off my sensor. Perhaps I was clumsy and accidentally touched the sensor? Not certain. Then, I tried attaching it back onto my astrophotography imaging train tonight and I discovered that my DSLR (EOS 60D astro-mod) failed to write any exposures without issuing an error. It turns out, the error occurs with all exposures longer than 1/60th second. I tried resetting all camera settings to the factory settings, but still get the problem. I tried a newly formatted card, but it didn’t work. Both ASIAir and camera only show errors. I see the exposure write error on the ASIAir, but I see an ERR when I just use the camera separately with a shutter speed slower that 1/60th. I tried very slow, 1 or more seconds, but got the same ERR. If I half-press the shutter twice, the error goes away. The screen advices to turn the camera off and back on, or remove/replace the battery, but none of those actions worked, either. BTW, this was in both Manual and Bulb modes. Any ideas?

[jrhoffman75]

How hard did you "touch: the sensor? Do you see any damage?

[jalbersh]

I doubt i touched it very hard, if i did. I don’t see any damage. There seems to be a black covering on the sensor now.

[Ron888]

Ive rubbed a Qtip on a sensor hard enough to make a mark,and also done many other (successful) wet cleanings.None of these ever affected a camera's operation.I'm pretty certain you've done no damage.
There is a chance the air from the blower affected the shutter blades somehow.

[jalbersh]

What is a shutter blade? Are they black?

[kvbarkley]

What is the error

[jalbersh]

It’s error 30. The error message says there was an exposure error. Then, it instructs to either power off the camera thrr re n power it back on or remove/replace the battery. I did both but still get the same 30 error. I also made certain the SD card was reformatted as bf not locked. As I said, it functions fine for exposures faster than 1/50th seconds. But this is my Astro camera and all my exposures are longer than 30 seconds.

[deebatman316]

Can you set the camera to manual sensor cleaning and see if the shutter blades are visible it could possibly be a failed shutter curtain. At 1/30th of sec the 2nd shutter curtain is also used. Higher shutter speeds such as 1/4000th of as sec only the first shutter curtain is used.

[stevet1]

jalbersh,

I do not know if this applies to your 60D or not, but do you have a setting in one of your menus that talks about ISO speed settings?

If you do, there is a secondary menu for setting a minimum shutter speed.

Try putting your camera in Av Mode with Auto ISO and go into your menus.

See if there is a setting in there somewhere that talks about the ISO speeds and/or minimum shutter speed.

Steve Thomas