Rebel T3i / 600d left turned on, now LCD non functional

[MetalSculptor]

Hi everyone really hope you can help me

I bought a T3i / 600d recently, really like it, couldnt afford newer or better but basically doe what I want from it which is shooting video.

However, I left it on this week for a few days without realizing. Now, without haing being dropped or abused in any way it has the following symptoms:

1) totally non functional like a brick with the SD card that was in it when i left it on

2) functions as normal with a new SD in it BUT LCD black

3) the LCD did flash on and off for a few seconds on one occasion when i was flicking through every setting on the dial in desperate hope it mgiht suddenly come back to life

I've spent a few hours on youtube, ive tried removing batteries overnight and leaving doors open and lens off, also tried setting it to 'P' with battery out and in on position holding shutter for 15 seconds to drain residual power ... still the same

I have plugged it in to my PC via an HDMI cable so I can see the menu and can see that everything is functioning perfectly .. i just cant see it!

So my question really is this ...

... it seems incredibly unlikely that a cable has broken or been damaged since it was just sat on a shelf, not dropped or knocked in any way ... but im wondering if prolongued power in some way might weaken a soldered joint or something? Seems unlikely since ive streamed using that camera for 3 or 4 hours with no issues at all. Equally, the camera was never under load and was set to auto power off after 8 mins so how hot could it get?

Seems these cameras can trip out in odd ways if you leave them left on, its very odd.

I really can't afford to replace it so Im praying someone here has some inredible tip or relevant experience that might help.

Thanks

John

[ebiggs1]

"Either way i'll let the forum know when I do."

Please do.

"I don't know enough about electronics or about the guts of any DSLR..."

I really don't either but I have an associates degree in electronics and have decades of experience with a DSLR.

"... you only have to go through the comments section to the videos ive benn watching to see that many people have had this experience .."

Again I would put little faith in much of that. The same reason I gave you before.  People drawing a conclusion that has nothing to do with what actually happened. The sitting on the shelf and not shutting it off by the switch may have nothing to do with your problem besides coincidence.

The camera doesn't load anything from the SD card. In fact it should work perfectly well without a SD installed. Of course it wouldn't save any photos. At any rate I would trash that SD card and buy a new one. BTW, you didn't try to use a off brand FW like Magic Lantern did you? That would explain a lot of you did.

[MetalSculptor]

I do use magic lantern yes, had no issue swith it, installed it months ago, i had to set the firmware back to the orignal firmware, it was on a later release.Did this no issues, then if i want to use ML i just put the SD card in that has it on there (not the corrupted SD, that one had no ML on it (ever)).

I can see the camera is worknig ok when i plug in to pc using either the ML SD card or a brand new one, just the LCD.

The only thing that makes me think it could be a cable is the way the LCD flickered on (perfect mage) for a few seconds then went off, but again, never any issues with the LCD or any part of the camera before i left it on and it was perfect until i took it away from my eye and put it on the shelf. Possible .. yes .. likelihood, pff ... like i say, the maths says its incredibly unlikely that an 11 year old flex cable gave up the ghost at that exact moment in an 11 year lifespan to coincide exactly with me leaving it on, which ive never done before.

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for me, i cant afford to replace it and without the LCD its basically a paperweight to me 😕

[ebiggs1]

All bets are off if you used ML. 

Magic Lantern enables the boot disk flag in your camera and then installs itself from the SD card. 

It is supposed to revert back if you replace the Magic Lantern SD card with a regular SD card. In theory, the camera will not find any code to load. It is then supposed to just load the stock FW. The chances of this scheme not working as it is designed to is low but it is not zero. The times I have seen it, albeit few, it has totally screwed up the camera.

I 100% don't recommend anyone use it but that's your choice not mine. If ML has corrupted your in camera Canon FW, you will not fix it yourself.

[MetalSculptor · Accepted solution]

Well well well ... what a funny afternoon I've just had. The issue is resolved!!!!!! Here's what I did to fix it ....

First, decided as a last port of call that I;d go to my local electrical shop, get some contact cleaner and try it on the 'DISP' button. As it happens it clearly wasn't this because the DISP doesnt disable the LCD in video mode so it was nothing to do with the that, but, not realizing it at the time I applied a fair spray onto the button and agitated it a few times .... obviously it made no difference.

However ... by complete coincidence there was a very reputable camera shop (Park Cameras, Burgess Hill, Sussex, UK) pretty much next door so i figured hell, I'll wander in and see if anyoen there has any expereince with this kind of thing.

They didn't!!!

By chance the expert I was talknig to did happen to mention that they had a T3i second hand, 65k on it (lifetime 100k) but it was £99 ... quite a bit of money to me but very reasonable, and it was tidy too, very tidy! So I bought it.

End of the story? ... no

The freedom of a spare camera gave me the confidence to follow the scary '600d service' video I found on YouTube a few days ago. With nothing to lose I decided (being reasonably good with my hands / tools) to attempt DSLR brain surgery.

What did I find?

Well, first off, the inside of the camera was absolutely mint! Not a spec of dust anywhere, I was quite impressed with that! I'm a metal sculptor and the camera is used to film what I do in a dusty cramped workshop, often with metal dust in the air. Good to know going forward that it's a very well sealed unit. My mission goal though, was to dismantle the LCD arrangement / remove the back of the camera and check all the connections (2 cables) that attach the LCD to what I guess is the mother board or some sort of input / output board.

The cables looked perfect and were both perfectly connected, not loose, no obvious damage, nothing. Slightly gutted to find that because obviously it was a possibility. This left me with nothing left to check really. There is a tiny battery which sits on a circuit board, you can just see it inside the battery compartment, but, since the time / date were still correct I assumed that this could not be the issue.

So, all that was left to do was to put it back together. Which I did, taking the tiem and trouble to put contact cleaner on both ends of both cables before reconnecting them to the back of the LCD and to the board.

After reassembling the camera for the second time I finally had no left over screws and was 100% happy everything and every screw was exactly as it had been before.

Rather hopelessly I refitted the battery and paused just for a monent before switching the camera back on. 'Please work' I said out loud and flicked the switch!

Boom! Perfect LCD!

So .... not sure if there is an obvious lesson to learn here but the implication of this is that those cables can be succeptible to ambient moisture / tarnish.  As I'd said before, the camera had never been dropped or knocked and of course consequently I found the internal cables perfectly attached. Very odd coincidence though that this happened after i left it on. I don't know what that means ... perhaps some residual current / temperature for extended periods makes tarnishing on those contacts accelerate or form abnormally fast? Odd!

I guess the lesson is ... drive home, try the contact cleaner and dont just bite the bullet on a replacement camera! Not the most expensive leson in the world and ultimately I now have 2 perfectly functional and tidy 600ds! (One is labelled t3i but you know what i mean). Not sure what i'lldo with the second one yet. A nice bit of redundancy to have I suppose, otherwise I guess one of them will go on ebay. They seem to sell for signifcantly more than £99 over here so maybe there's even a small profit to be had!

Anyway there you go! ... resolution for you. Not broken cables, not magic lantern and not a secondary symptom of the corrupted SD card that bricked it last week. A bizarre but happy conclusion!

[John_]

Time will tell but for now a big YAY!! to you!!

[MetalSculptor]

Cheers John

Here's an intersting youtube comment posted on the service video i followed

'Thank you very much. This helped me bring back my cannon 600D after a bad accident, where I tried using an old film flash with this camera, and something broke and the screen stopped working properly. Apparently when I shot, the flash sent current through the 3.5mm jack into the camera, and triggered something where itthought it has an HDMI device connected, which made the main screen black except when turned off (it shows cleaning sensor). detaching the ports fixed it, though a capacitor popped after turning it off first time with connectors removed. Works good now :)'

Now im thinking maybe I had metal dust in the HDMI port creating a short and a similar consequence? (I used contact cleaner / airline on that too) I only say that now because testing every function out on the new and old cameras just now I notice that as soon as you plug the camera in to the pc the LCD gets disabled.

Food for thought. Clearly a good camera but not without the odd eccentricity!

[John_]

Something to remember for sure. Maybe you should invest in a camera case or tape off those ports and prevent any metal dust from getting into them. In addition rather than blowing air at the camera and risking driving debris further into the camera get yourself a micro vacuum tool adapter set which attaches to a standard vacuum hose with small nozzles that produce a great deal of focused suction.for small openings, crevices etc.

In any event, it is always a good feeling when some time and effort produces positive results!