Canon 300D Sub-Mirror problems

adderman

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19 Feb 2007 - 5:52 PM

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Hi All,

A very frustrating thing happened to me over the weekend and I wondered if any of you might know any 'easy-fix' repair techniques without the £130 bill I’ve been quoted..

The issue is that that the sub-mirror spring has gone AWOL… That is, when I take an image 4/5 of the image are now black and when I close up the sub-mirror, I lose auto focus.. I believe it has something to do with the pin that makes both mirrors move together during exposure, I have searched the net and found this is a common problem with the 300D when you exceed 10,000 images. Not a lot but I guess it is a bottom of the range SLR, but I have enjoyed it and have taken some reasonable shots with it.

I don’t want to part with it but I don’t wont to fork out, what amounts to be, 50% of it’s value now…

Any Ideas out there, it’s out of warranty and of course Canon will never admit to this being a design fault despite it happening to many people across the globe….!

Look forward to your replies.

Kind regards

Brett. (adderman)

adderman

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19 Feb 2007 - 6:04 PM

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I guess this would be an option for repair but if your camera then goes into meltdown with circuit board issues you might as well bin-it...!

Why Canon even thought that a 'plastic-pin' was a good idea in the first place scares me when i'm considering buying another camera, does this happen on other models as well??

Thanks Brian..

Brett.

strawman

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19 Feb 2007 - 10:43 PM

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I believe it has been fixed in later Canon cameras. The 20D and 30D have much higher use mirror/shutter arangements with numbers such as 100k operations being bandied about.

The pin replacement sounds easy to do. I guess canon just used their film camera mirror and for a film camera its probably just fine. Lets face it most entry film cameras had say 10 film run through them a year. More than 10 years to this problem for film.

For the record my 300D has just gone past 40K without this failure (though the mirror glue did fail).

Yet. No doubt tomorrow it will.

Think how much I would have spent on film Stan and no I do not think cameras from times gone past were more reliable, as I well remember the need to send them off for service due to sticky shutters etc.

adderman

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14 May 2008 - 3:29 PM

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Just an update.. I had the problem fixed a while ago now, but here goes..

In fact I have an excellent technician who did it for me and it cost about £35. He simply replaced the sub-mirror pin with a new brass one..

If you send it away to a canon repairer you could be looking at a hefty bill as they will want to replace the whole mirror unit. THIS IS NOT NECESSARY...! They will also try and tell you the part is not replaceable, but the pin mechanism is the same as the old canon 'A' series and therefore you just order that part instead. Have it replaced and that's it..

Now that the plastic/nylon pin has been replaced it shouldn't happen again within the life of the camera at least..

Hope that helps..

Brett