T3i screen freezing up after taking a picture

[jdfwright]

Hello all. I'm completely new to this camera. The only thing I have done is take pictures and transfer a few to my Mac. So, please be very specific about your suggestions.

A couple of weeks ago, my family was on our way home from the beach and stopped along the shore to take some pictures of my daughter. After I took the first picture, my screen froze up and I had to take the battery out and put it back in for each subsequent photo. Very annoying. After we got home, I put it up and didn't think about it any until this morning, I went to take some pictures, and am having the same issue.

I've been skimming through some stuff online, but I lack the patience to dig for information right now, so I'm hoping that someone can point me in the right direction. I've seen something about the firmware (I don't know how to do that) and the memory card, but I don't know what to try.

Thanks in advance!

[TCampbell]

This sounds like you may have the camera's "Image Review" option set to "hold".

When you take a photo, two things normally happen.

1)  The camera should write the image to your memory card.  You'll know when it's writing to your memeory card because there is a red LED ligth which is active when the camera is using the card.  When the light goes out, the camera is finished.

2)  The camera can be set to do "Image Review".  By default, when you take an exposure, the camera will display the image on the rear screen for just a few seconds.  But this behavior can be customized.

Your choices for image review are "Off", 2 seconds, 4 seconds, 8 seconds, or "Hold".  If Off is selected you wont get any image review.  If "Hold" is selected, the image you just took will appear on the rear LCD and will never go away until you manually clear it.  You can just do a half-press of the shutter button to clear it (it wont get in the way of you taking more shots... just ignore it.)

You can find instructions on this on page 166 of your T3i Instruction Manual which describes how to change this setting.

[jdfwright]

Thanks for your response. I checked the image review and it is set to 2 seconds. I also tried taking a picture and verifying that the red indicator light came on. It did. This time, after taking the photo, the image came up, and then the screen went to a black screen and got stuck there. The camera was on and the battery was not dead. And I, once again, had to take the battery out to get the screen to function again.

Any other ideas what could be going on?

[TCampbell]

Did the indicator light also go "off" (i.e. it should light up only long enought to save the file to the memory card and then go dark again.)?

If the indicator light remains/stuck on, then I'd try a different memory card (always formt the memory card in camera -- not using the computer and not just leaving it with the factor pre-formatting).  

If the indicator light DOES go off, then the memory card is not likely the problem.  You may need to reset camera back to defaults, *might* need to re-flash the firmware onto the camera, and/or may need to contact Canon service for assistance.

This website is really a user community help (e.g. most everyone here is just another Canon user like yourself.)  So to get on Canon's service-radar (so you have visibility into your issue from Canon), you'd want to contact their support for help.