Problem: Blank frames

[ericzhu]

My r-d1s has problem: Though shutter tripping but blank black frames is occured instead of an image. It is said that an old or poor-quality generic battery can cause this ; however, I use the original fully charged battery, it still happens. Now I shoot 10 photos, 9 are blank black ones.

What shall I do?

 

[le-alain]

I suppose you put out the cover of the lense ??
sorry, but i did .. 🙂)


Did you verify your shutter fired correctly (without lense) ?
try 1/30 1/15, 1/4, 1/2s B for instance.

It's real that the RD-1 is very sensitive to battery quality and age!
even Epson's one!!!

But Generally, it will freeze and do eventually one black frame, and sometimes reset the file names count, (camera off and battery out, and it would be in order..)

 

[Lss]

It is said that an old or poor-quality generic battery can cause this ; however, I use the original fully charged battery, it still happens.

It's not the brand of the battery, it's the age of it. You should try with a new one (a generic will do). If the problem persists, then it's something else.

 

[ericzhu]

It's not the brand of the battery, it's the age of it. You should try with a new one (a generic will do). If the problem persists, then it's something else.

I have tried with a new battery, the problem still occurs.

 

[ericzhu]

I suppose you put out the cover of the lense ??
sorry, but i did .. 🙂)

Surely the lens cover is off the lens when I report the problem.:bang:

 

[ericzhu]

But Generally, it will freeze and do eventually one black frame, and sometimes reset the file names count, (camera off and battery out, and it would be in order..)

I formated the SD card and took the battery out last night. This morning, put the battery back, it works, but only after 6 shots, the black frame comes back again.

Today take the battery out again, tomorrow I would try resetting the filenames count.

 

[azkay]

Have you tried a new sd card?

 

[ericzhu]

Have you tried a new sd card?

Yes. New sd card tried, problem still exists.

 

[Sejanus.Aelianus]

I formated the SD card and took the battery out last night. This morning, put the battery back, it works, but only after 6 shots, the black frame comes back again.

That sounds as if it's leading back to the battery again. A battery that's on its way out may appear to charge fully but is not holding a full charge. I don't know how "intelligent" the epson charger is, but I have seen chargers fail with similar symptoms.

Does the R1 have a socket to let you power it externally? If so, you might want to try using that and see what effect it has on the symptoms.

 

[azkay]

It does not. Though if you pull apart a battery and solder the case of it to a 3.7v dc charger (mobile phone charger etc. check with multimeter. My epson batteries are around 4.20v fully charged), you could test it that way.

 

[aldobonnard]

That has happened to me some time ago, I was looking for a second body, and ordered one second-hand R-D1 from a shop in London (Aperture). From day one, these black frames were happening, I tried all batteries, new ones, didn't change. So I quickly sent it back to them and got a refund. For your info, they sold the R-D1 to another person later, without doing any prior service - that tells how serious some can be -.
Fortunately my first R-D1 body never had this problem so I kept it.

From this experience and what I could have read elsewhere, it sounds more the shutter mechanism needing a replacement and it would be worth sending it to Epson Japan and have the camera back "as new". Not cheap, but they do a great job, in my view and experience, much better quality than Leica service and way cheaper.

 

[le-alain]

did you verify the shutter as suggested ?
under 1/30 to 1/2s you should see the 2 curtains working.

to know if the shutter open properly, or the frame is not correctly or at all recorded ?
Do you try to boost at max luminance on the black frame to see if it's a real black, ar a noisy black or a ghosted picture in it ?

😉

 

[ericzhu]

After 1 more night taking battery out, then put it back to the camera, fully format the card, renitiailze the camera, What a wonder, the camera works again. I shot more than 30 pictures, there is none black frame. Magic, magic.

 

[le-alain]

Great news !

 

[paradoxbox]

capacitors can hold a charge inside the camera for a surprisingly long time, you need to keep the battery out for around 30-60 seconds to be absolutely sure the charge is gone from all/any capacitors in the camera, then return it.

i also think that a bad memory card can cause this kind of problem. when the camera's buffer is full or is getting overloaded the camera can start to act weird, the camera automatically locks out the shutter. i think that there may be a kind of firmware bug related to the control of the shutter and buffer that rears its head when a dirty or a slow memory card is used.

 

[Mr_Flibble]

Glad to hear the problem went away.

 

[Kookie B.]

Hello all,

I've recently purchased an R-D1 and I'm new to the forum (first post) so apologize for the late response.

Does the OP shoot RAW? I ask because I had the blank frame isssue until I realized that shooting RAW+jpg caused a (relatively) long write time to my card. I found I was too quick to review the picture on the screen and I think that caused a conflict resulting in the blank frame. Once I developed some patience I found the problem went away.

Thoughts?

Kookie B.