So Chris, I'm dying to know how the 5D2 held up for you on you trip!
Are you pleased with it?

Cheers,
Hugh

You don't want to know.

Reports(s) coming soon.

Michael

I just ordered my 5DII yesterday Michael. Why are you scaring the (expletive deleted) out of me?

Maybe Michael is simply saying that the 5DII is allergic to penguins.

In any case, for the moment I think I'm glad I haven't traded in my plain old 5D yet.

Not to make too big a mystery of it, because I'll have a "What Worked, What Didn't" article up within 24 hours, but of the 26 Canon 5D MKIIs on board six died in various ways at various times, largely due to humidity and water issues, while no other cameras suffered similarly. That's a 25% failure rate.

More tomorrow.

Michael

Ouch! That's painful. I hope mine will prove to be different - I've already sold the 5D.
I look forward to reading the report. Sort of....

Cheers,
Hugh

How cold?

I'm leaving Australia (hot!) to Sapporo Japan (snow!)

But then again to us aussies, 10 degree cel is cold.

Bought the 5D Mark II for this trip, hope it won't die on me!

Just a heads-up that I've delayed the publication of my "What Worked" article till later next week. Today's new essay takes precedence as does the one that I'll publish on Tuesday (for reasons that will become obvious then).

Michael

This is why exactly I am reluctant to buy kit that is fresh to market. I prefer to wait until any problems have been discovered + sorted. I bought the original 5D4-5 months after release IIRC.
Mind you if you can afford that particular trip, you probably had a 1DsII/III as back up anyway - as I think Michael mentions in his value article.
I certainly wouldn't go on that sort of sojourn with just a 5DII.

Thanks for letting us know and take your time. I'm sure it will be a balanced article as always with much to learn for all of us.

In the meantime I will just enjoy all the trolls killing each other in a lot of other forums on explaining and valueing the little piece of data you let out

Whats the proportion of 5DII cameras that failed over the others that didn't fail? And whats the brand breakdown? Remember the Canon 1 series cameras that failed on one of Michael's trip to the pole? This sets a trend....

Daniel

Michael,

I picked up two of the first batch of 5D2s & have been working them fairly regularly. During a two day shoot in the forests outside San Francisco it was rainy & cold so I mostly used a Storm Jacket camera cover over my primary body.

While downloading CFs I noticed this camera became covered in condensation, so I stopped bringing it into the heated motor home. Still shortly after the multi-control toggle failed & I switched to the backup body.

At the end of the day I put the camera & lenses in Ziplocs, so additional condensation would form on the outside of the bags, & luckily the next day the primary camera came back to life.

Best regards,
Bern

I live in Winnipeg. Minus 30, minus 40 C regularly during the last couple of months. No problem with my 5D2.
Frozen batteries are the biggest problem I face!

Cheers,
Hugh

Michael,

You probably already intend to include such information, but it would be interesting to get data on the temperatures that you got when shooting during your Antartica trip.

My understanding is that it is pretty mild at this time of the year, but more accurate info would help plan possible future trips.

Thank you.

Cheers,
Bernard

I am curious to know if their 'death' was definitive. Hell of a way to spend your once-in-a-lifetime-$15.000-photo-trip without photos.
Hopefully their owners had a camera-cellphone, and hopefully Canon will have a meaningful reaction soon.

The problems had nothing to do with temperature. The range was +2C to -3C. It was humidity and light rain.

More later in the week.

Michael

It will be interesting to discover, over the course of time, whether this expereince is widely replicated - percentagewise, few 5D2 owners go to the Antarctic, but very many will use in conditions of damp and humidity. Either its a manufacturing/batch fault in which case the manufacturer may or may not do something about it, or its a design fault, in which case the characteristic will likely persist at least until there is a new model in 18/24 months time. Funny, my 5D (original) doesn't seem to suffer in that way.

You know, I wish I had spoken up when we took the survey. My concern is that some people were worried about condensation. They chose to use rain covers and I think some sealed their equipment on return in large plastic baggies.... is it possible they forced moisture into the warming equipment by doing so?

For the record, I shot with a 1D3 totally exposed, along with the 580EX II in the rain for about 2 hours. I even took on and off several times a 1.4EX, shielding as much as possible the open camera when doing so with my body. I had no failures in the worst conditions we experienced. I merely wiped everything down with a towel afterwards, and left it out on my bunk. I also used a 40D, with either a 24-105 or 70-200 f/2.8 IS. I chose not to use the 40D in direct rain, but had it out while on Zodiac cruises....no problems there as well.

Lucky, I guess.

Last August, I had a brand new 1Ds3 in a very light rain with the same 70-200, or a 400DO lens. In 15 minutes, I had an "Error 99" that didn't go away until an overnight drying - then it was fine. I didn't have that camera on this trip, as I have traded it away...

These failures seem random.

Thanks for the feedback, looking forward to your article.

Cheers,
Bernard

Thats logical. If you seal a wet camera in a bag and bring into (comparative) warmth, the water will evaporate and then potentially condense on the still cold surfaces inside the camera, e.g electrical contacts . Still, you would need to establish that it was only those with 5D2s were doing this to exonerate the camera. As it is my planned upgrading from 5D to 5D2 is definitely on hold.

Regardless of the camera type I can't imagine that sealing it cold and wet in a water tight plastic bag and then warming it up while sealed would be a good idea. Other than actually submersing the camera I can't imagine a more stringent exposure to moisture.

It would be very interesting to know if the cameras that failed were treated (abused) in this way.

True indeed. One should for sure start by wiping the camera...

What I would adivse is:

- The camera is cold and dry -> it makes sense to keep it inside a zip lock when taking it back indoors since this will keep drier cold air in contact with the body longer and allow it to warm slowly until it comes in contact with damper hot air. There will always be some form of condensation if the temperature gap is high (I experieinced about 35-40 degrees C gap last week). Make sure to wipe the camera totally dry before going back outdoors... or else you'll have a nice layer of frost on your front lens element if it is freezing,

- The camera is cold and wet -> wipe it first to remove most of the humidity, and then put in a zip lock back slithgly open upwards to let humidity escape without letting warmer (and therefore lighter) air come in.

Cheers,
Bernard

My wife and I were among the 6 5DmkII cameras that failed. We had them in Kata rain jackets and they failed before we got back on the ship.

Did it recover after some time, or did it remain dead?

Did your camera get wet or over exposed to the elements during that time even with the Kata rain jacket?

I guess we pressed the shutter release with moist fingers. They failed 1.5 hours into a 2 hour outing, not when we got back to the warm ship.

There were a lot of people on the trip that had their non 5D mk II cameras completely exposed and they didn't have any issues.

Martin

Does that mean that you had two cameras and both failed? Damn, that is bad news for you. Did any of them recover again?

did you have ny more cameras with you?

Yup - both failed within minutes of each other on the 3rd or 4th day of the 13 day trip. They did recover once we got them back on the ship and dried them out, although the shutter release on my wife's remained flaky. Sometimes it would fire, sometimes not.

We also had 2 of the original Canon 5Ds with us as well. I've never had any problems with those.

Martin

I just returned from antarctica also (national geographic) and used my new 5D2 while kayaking through an ice littered cove. While I kept it in my Simms dry bag off and on, it was out enough time to get splashed on and handled by my wet gloves. when it went into the "dry" bag it was damp with splashed water. At another time I used it in light rain, but I would not use it in heavy rain ever. anyway my 5D2 preformed flawlessly so not all hope is lost. I was very pleased with the camera, so much so I'm trading in my 1DsIII. Eleanor

I used my 5D2 in light rain with no rain cover a few weeks ago in Japan. Didn't have any problems.

Same for me. While in Japan, I was suffering in blizzards up North, though it was decidedly warmer this year then usual for January in Hokkaido.

I think I've written it before, but this is why the sealed bag is a good idea, not as bad an idea as some people would think... but there's points that should be remembered when doing so.

The first thing to understand is that the warmer the air is, the more moisture it is capable of holding... This is common knowledge for some people, but it's suprising how many people don't know this.
An example of this is: Air at 30*C at 80% humidity has more moisture content then air at 20*C at 80% humidity.

The next point is there are three very important temperatures that you should make the effort to know.
They are: Average Air Temp, Dew Point, and Surface Temperature.
The average Air temp is the one we all know and judge by. Dew Point is the temperature at which condensation forms on any surface that hits or goes below that temperature... Of course the surface temperature is the temperature of your camera and lenses... if this temperature is < or = to dew point, you'll get condensation.

There are instruments that will give you such readings... These are primarily used in scientific industries, aviation, and painting industries. They're usually not cheap, and for accuracy calibration is recommended, which also comes at a price.
For most purposes a whirling hygrometer will suffice, and is significantly cheaper then anything digital, though not as convenient.

There are a few things in humidity you can do to protect your gear, which is as follows:

Keep it above the highest dew point. Hard to do if you're working outside in the cold & Place it in a sealed plastic bag prior to going to warmer locations. It's important that you remove as much excess air as possible from the bag though, and it doesn't hurt to have a dry cloth inside the bag to capture moisture should it form. Once inside, warm it up slowly... All pretty standard stuff. Once it's at an acceptable temp, you can remove it safely.

---

BTW. some people get confused about dew point, and thing that it will always be 0... but it isn't. For example, 30*C @ 80% humidity (a humid tropical day) will have a dew point of 26*C approximately.

Don't know how much of that's useful, but some people might be interested. ^_~

How many 5DIIs experienced this "moisture/corrosion" failure (at the shutter button, I presume)? We know of two for sure, but the article is not entirely clear. Out of the six failures, one was a cracked top LCD, and one was a loose screw on the lens mount. That leaves two that are unknown. I'd be interested in knowing if they were similar failures to the two discussed here. As it stands, the failure rate for this disturbing problem is at least 8% and as high as 15% (assuming there were four related failures).