Odd M6 II Shutter Burst Fault

[cr3shooter]

Recently I’ve experienced a strange intermittent shutter related fault on my M6 II. Most of my shooting is in bursts on either the H or H+ speed setting. The fault is that in the middle of a burst the camera doesn’t record one or more frames. Sometimes it sounds like the shutter fired perfectly but it didn’t record the frame. Sometimes it works perfectly. Sometimes the skip sounds like the camera was on L speed, which it wasn’t. Every time the first and second frames are recorded and the missing frames are after that without any pattern to what’s missing. Sometimes one frame is skipped. Sometimes it’s multiple frames.

Other items to note:
There’s no error message on the camera.
The battery is freshly charged.
It shows the same fault on a different brand of memory card.
Camera has done about 55,000 frames
Camera has been powered off & on again by removing the battery.

I can’t see any setting that needs changing and it sounds like a trip to the camera scrapyard or Canon Repair Services is needed for a new shutter.
Has anyone else seen this ?

 

[musicshootr]

Have you tried swapping out the memory card for a faster one? If the camera is taking the photo but the card isn't writing it, that might be a card write issue, not a camera issue.

 

[cr3shooter]

In my original post I unfortunately didn’t say that when the camera misbehaved it was set up on a tripod and fired remotely by an E3 cable release with an extension.

Today I went out with the camera and took a fair number of shots, all holding the camera normally and firing using the built-in shutter release. During this time it performed perfectly. The obvious conclusion is that somehow the cable release or extension cable is faulty, or even the E3 socket on the camera. Now that I know this I can run more tests to narrow down the cause of the fault.

I’ve had faulty release cables before but they completely stopped the camera working, not interrupting a burst which seems to me to be an odd fault.

 

[musicshootr]

Hmm. That's interesting. Maybe running the cabled release drew just enough power (electrical or processing) that the camera couldn't write that many burst images to the card. Or maybe it's just a code/firmware fault or a hardware issue with that accessory. I'm interested to see what your testing yields.

 

[cr3shooter]

An update on the problem and the tests I’ve run. First I tried another M6 II body that I keep as a spare. It experienced the same problem of intermittently missing pictures in a burst. This was a great help as it told me the problem was very unlikely to be a faulty camera. I replaced the main release extension cable with a spare as I’ve had problems with these cables failing in the past but the fault still occurred - intermittently. The actual E3 release is a non-Canon item branded Shoot which I’d bought cheaply on Ebay five years ago. I bought a new one of a slightly different design branded Cuely and also replaced an adapter cable. Yesterday I tried out the whole setup with both cameras and they worked fine without any missed pictures. This says to me that the release was faulty. When I got home I took it apart fairly easily as just two small screws hold it together. I cleaned the contact points but they weren’t dirty. I thought that one of the metal contact bars was a slightly awkward shape as it might not make good contact unless the release button was pushed hard. With some tools I bent it slightly so it ought to make contact under all types of button push. Next time I go out for a photo session I’ll check out the “modified” original Shoot release as it has a more robust plastic cable than the Cuely.