Canon eos-m. I cleaned sensor. Camera died

Peter42y2 wrote:

Well, maybe small but I find hard to believe there is no one single camera repair shop in the whole country. Anyway... good luck.

You are right. There are repair shops

But are they reliable?

Besides Eos-m was a new Canon model. In small repair shop are they familiar with the camera, a new Canon model ? Hard to believe.

So I would prefer to resort to a bigger repair facility where there would be greater likelihood that technicians are more familiar with the m cameras

EOS M is a ten- year old model. Experience is not the problem, workshop manual and unofficial repair guides are no problem, Portugal is still part of the European Union so postage, VAT and Customs are no problem if you want to send it to Amsterdam or Germany. The biggest problems are that an hour's skilled labour plus the establishment costs of a large repair facility will cost a lot compared  with the second-hand value of a ten year old camera.  Replacement parts will probably have to come out of a dead camera as Canon only try to keep spare parts for seven years after they discontinue a model. I think you would be better off with the sort of one-man firm that repaired my EOS M a few years ago.

My Powershot G9 did fail on me while travelling many years ago. It wouldn't turn on after being shut off.

I had to use my G6 to continue shooting.

This was a known problem with that camera (loose screw causing a short) and it is repairable, but I've never taken the time to try to fix it.

The bottom line is that any camera can fail unexpectedly.

Sittatunga wrote:

Peter42y2 wrote:

Well, maybe small but I find hard to believe there is no one single camera repair shop in the whole country. Anyway... good luck.

You are right. There are repair shops

But are they reliable?

Besides Eos-m was a new Canon model. In small repair shop are they familiar with the camera, a new Canon model ? Hard to believe.

So I would prefer to resort to a bigger repair facility where there would be greater likelihood that technicians are more familiar with the m cameras

EOS M is a ten- year old model. Experience is not the problem, workshop manual and unofficial repair guides are no problem, Portugal is still part of the European Union so postage, VAT and Customs are no problem if you want to send it to Amsterdam or Germany. The biggest problems are that an hour's skilled labour plus the establishment costs of a large repair facility will cost a lot compared with the second-hand value of a ten year old camera. Replacement parts will probably have to come out of a dead camera as Canon only try to keep spare parts for seven years after they discontinue a model. I think you would be better off with the sort of one-man firm that repaired my EOS M a few years ago.

Thank you for your answer.  Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.

Well.., I still have 2 eos-m, anyway. One fairly used, and the other with Little use.

The newer quality cameras are much more expensive. So to pay 200 bucks for a apsc camera might make sense.

By culture portuguese are not wary with good reason. Things here do not always work as they should.

My idea was to continue to use eos-m for as long as I could.

Buying a good phone just because of camera is not an option, since, because I am short-sighted, I mainly use tablet, not cell phone.

So to buy a cell phone of 600 bucks because camera, is nonsense. Better repair camera I already have.

If the broken camera were the only one I had, I would try to find repair. No doubt about it. Since I have 2 more, maybe I will wait.

Thank you for your ideas and advice.

Hi,

First sorry this happened, it's always painful when a trusted, well-cared "thing" stops working.

Secondly, let me offer an expert opinion. I'm an Electrical Engineer and have designed / built lots of high-end consumer products over nearly two decades.

The only way to know for sure what is wrong is to disassemble the camera and post pictures of the circuit board -- you might find or easily see something that looks burned or damaged.

I suspect when you turned on the ultrasonic cleaning feature, the camera quickly pulled a burst of current which might have destroyed a component that was near failing after having been "stressed" by years of normal use.

If I were guessing, I'd say something like a "polyfuse" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettable_fuse) which are devices like a normal fuse that interrupt current flow if they become too hot, and when they cool down they let current flow again ( a self-resetting fuse ).

If you really want this camera repaired, another option might be to buy a similar model that has a damaged shutter / scratched sensor and swap the circuit board with yours.

vrdpr wrote:

Hi,

First sorry this happened, it's always painful when a trusted, well-cared "thing" stops working.

Secondly, let me offer an expert opinion. I'm an Electrical Engineer and have designed / built lots of high-end consumer products over nearly two decades.

The only way to know for sure what is wrong is to disassemble the camera and post pictures of the circuit board -- you might find or easily see something that looks burned or damaged.

I suspect when you turned on the ultrasonic cleaning feature, the camera quickly pulled a burst of current which might have destroyed a component that was near failing after having been "stressed" by years of normal use.

If I were guessing, I'd say something like a "polyfuse" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettable_fuse) which are devices like a normal fuse that interrupt current flow if they become too hot, and when they cool down they let current flow again ( a self-resetting fuse ).

If you really want this camera repaired, another option might be to buy a similar model that has a damaged shutter / scratched sensor and swap the circuit board with yours.

Thank you very much for your knowgeable reply.

I am a complete ignorant as far as electronics are concerned but I was 99% convinced the damage was a result of the instruction I gave  to manually  clean the camera.

I did press the manual cleaning  button, camera did shut off.

I even tried to find online information about that manual cleaning feature in order to understand how it could have broken, damaged something inside, but I was unable to find any easy to understand info.

Thank you for your reply

You did confirm my suspicions.

Swap circuit board is not within my capabilities but at least I know where damage did happen.

The information you did provide was very valuable.

Now I will try to find trustworthy place where camera can be repaired.

Thank You.

KEG wrote:

I would think that the most economic choice would be to get M200 or M50 mk II.

My 2015 M3 is perfect working order but I feel much better knowing that I have also M6 from 2017 and M6 mk II from 2022.

Thank You for your reply.

Something useful has come out of this threat.

Mr Vrdpr, an expert, was kind enough to make a contribution to this threat and solve the mystery.

Mr Kegg was kind enough to reply to me. I believe he solved the mystery why camera died.

"I suspect when you turned on the ultrasonic cleaning feature, the camera quickly pulled a burst of current which might have destroyed a component that was near failing after having been "stressed" by years of normal use.

"

A quick burst of current fried something inside the camera.

Eos-m users beware.

Thank You again