Canon 5D MarkII - The Grip Errors

Well it's TRUE!!!

Canon has done it again. A brand new camera with lots of great features but again errors are arising from it.


I thought carefully if I could put my mouth to the world, about this, or wait until a couple of rumors started to arise on the web.

After a lot of thinking I decided to release this info to all you people that purchase the new Canon 5D MarkII or are planning on buying it in a couple of days, weeks or months.

This is nothing that I was not expecting after I received the BG-E6 and looking at it carefully.

It has the same connections problems has previous models and it continues to be very fragile. (Canon you are so mean after all this years you did not have time to replace this series with a better grip, shame on you guys!!!)

Maybe you will never experience this problems, maybe you will start to experience them as soon as you got the grip... well you all know that technology is a f... s... sometimes it comes perfect while some other times it simply sucks no mater what you do the faulty ones need to be replaced.




This error 80 is one of the main errors that the 5D MarkII gives me almost all the time.

Here is the Camera combo I normally use when these errors occurred:

- Firmware 1.0.7
- Canon 5D MarkII
- Grip BG-E6
- 2 Canon Batteries LP-E6 (On the Grip)
- EF 24-70 L USM
- EF 70-200 L IS USM
- CF Cards Sandisk Extreme III, IV and Ducati (4Gb and 8Gb)
- 580EX



Then on another assignment while using the 24-70 L with 580EX flash and grip on the vertical position the Error 02 appeared, after 30 frame shots, apparently from nowhere and it caused the camera to stop working.

After removing both batteries and unscrew and screw back on the lens the camera started to work normally but the card warning came again saying that the card was not formatted and if I wanted to format it.

I kept the card for later inspection and worked with another one. After arriving home and analyzed the card I noticed that all the 30 pictures take were gone. I had to use Sandisk RescuePro to get those pictures back from the card. UFFF, assignment saved!!!!

I also got a strange "Card Full" information when I had only taken 20 pictures and the camera had always the red light on. I found that strange since I was certain that I had formatted the card before starting the assignment, but you never know... maybe it was my fault so I removed the card after the red light turns off and decided to keep the card and see what the problem could be afterward in the computer.

You will not believe this... the ,card had 4 folders the normal MISC and 3 DCIM more. When inspected the each of the DCIM folders I found that the camera had created 3 more identical folder with the same the same 20 pictures I took copied endless times untill the card was full :)

So the camera got this copy/paste issue and copied all the pictures to those folders until the card was full and this happened with no grip attached.

Please Canon send us a firmware to correct this ASAP!!!



Another error that's been giving a couple of times and while shooting with 1/30 or 1/20 speeds is the Error 70.



Here is a page with some of the "normal" Canon errors ;)

I finally figured out what the problem is.

After a group investigation with some of other fellow photographers, here in Portugal, that have the same camera but not use the grip or not have the double batteries, I concluded that the problem is the grip with 2 batteries.

When the batteries start to become empty like the above image it seems that the grip looses it's power and start giving failure messages. It cannot process the images or have a failure to the drive because it lacks power to function properly.

I contacted Canon Portugal an they do not even know what's going on with this. No one has reported this so far and since the replacement batteries are now available at the moment and people are using Alkaline batteries on the grip they do not have received any reports from this errors.

Not happy with the Portuguese reply I decided to write to Canon Europe Headquarters (Germany) and send them the above pictures to support my complain.

I received a reply 2 days later saying that they are aware of this situation and that a couple of grips were released with defect and they will send me a replacement one in a couple of days so I can test it out.

It's impossible for me know which serials are affected since the grip apparently do not have serial number on it but I will try to check with Canon and report it here as soon as I got some more good news.

Meanwhile if you get any of these errors please report them immediately to your Canon supplier in order to have them replaced at no cost.


Here is the table of the Error Codes for the 5D MarkII as stated on page 209 of the Instructions Manual.

I do blame Canon for this happenings and for letting us, the consumers, be their Beta testers.

Remember when they release the 1D MarkIII flop with it's super fast shutter speed but with lot's of problems and issues with the mirror and auto focus performance.

And if you do not know what I'm talking about just check the Rob Galbraith extensive review on this issue.

With this Canon has lost part of the share market to Nikon and it looks like they do not even care or worry about it because technology its first than photography and photographers.

While Nikon, on the other hand, they improved their infrared flash system, improved the flashes and released 3 cameras that beat out of the Canon arsenal and also made great improvements on their lenses.

Canon on the other hand gave us the 1D MarkIII flop and now with the 5D MarkII, stated as a video recorder that you could control its functions, turns out that you do not have control over the video mode and the most important one is the faulty grip BG-E6.

If you can remember well this has also happened a couple years ago when they released the Canon EOS 20D with it's also faulty grip that I also complained and send back, a couple of them, before I move to the 1D series.

From everyday that passes I noticed that Canon has a more commercial approach to the market than making things happen to photographers, they always want to be ahead of technology and introduce more new things but forget about improving the ones they already have, I mean the old ST-E2 for example.

This could mean an advantage over the other manufacturers ... just imagine Canon could introduce on their flash system something like the Radio Popper to control their flashes and also improve the 580EXII with a more powerful and better balanced one something in the range of the Nikon SB-900?

They could improve the sharpness of the 100-400mm by releasing a new one and while talking about lens why not a 12-24 L USM (Nikon has it so don't come saying that it will be impossible) and a replacement for the bulky 24-70 L USM lighter and with better overall sharpness or replace it for a 24-85 2.8 L USM IS ?

Turn their heads toward the photographers instead of just releasing new things that most of the people would not use them anyway.

So what would you like to have on the new cameras and flashes systems and why?

Write your suggestions maybe Canon guys would read this and could give us what we really asked for ;)