Canon EOS 50D 1.0.3 firmware released

Canon has released the much awaited 1.0.3 firmware update for the Canon 50D. Here are the notes, and lets hope that it does indeed deal with the err99…we should find out soon enough.

Link to site

Notes from the page regarding changes,

This firmware update (Version 1.0.3) incorporates the following fixes.

1. Corrects a phenomenon in which an image becomes overexposed when C.Fn.II-3 Highlight tone priority is set to “1″ together with other camera settings. (This correction has already been incorporated in the Version 1.0.2 and later firmware.

2. Corrects a rare phenomenon in which “busy” blinks on the camera’s display panel and the shutter cannot be released due to the timing of battery installation.

3. Corrects a rare phenomenon in which “Err 99″ appears on the camera’s display panel and LCD monitor and the shutter cannot be released due to the timing of pressing the shutter button.

Firmware Version 1.0.3 is for cameras with firmware up to Version 1.0.2. If the camera’s firmware is already Version 1.0.3, it is not necessary to update the firmware.

….

My install was fast and painless, now the testing begins…

Canon 50D err99 failure yet again today

I am going to continue to report the problems I am having with the 50D because it is clear from the hits I get on my blog, forums I’ve read, and posts that I have read that the 50D problems with err99 are more than ‘just a few bad bodies’. Now I will say that it has only happened to me once in maybe 150 shots, but that’s not the point….you should be able to trust hardware to either work or fail (and at the price and brand new status of the 50D I’m going with work not fail), no one wants to be on a shoot or at a place you cannot go back to and take the shot again and have a failure.

Today whilst shooting I got another err99, the interesting part was I knew it was about to happen!

I was shooting shots with high speed burst, the bursts were 3 to 4 frames only and around 15 seconds between each of the bursts. That is plenty of time for those few files to be written from the camera’s memory cache to the compact flash card.

The way I knew something was about to happen is that on the last two or three bursts that I shot the camera appeared to be getting slower between frames. Each frame exposed correctly and the shutter speed was correct but the time between each shot being taken felt like it was getting a little longer each time, and then sure enough it finally did an err99 on me.

This makes me continue to believe what I already feel, the problem is related to the writing to/from the cache and or the compact flash card. I know it’s not the card it’s self since I had been using it for at least a year on my 30D with no problems. And I know it’s not the lens as I have been using that on my 30D for at least a year and a half and have never had a problem with it.

Canon 50D and Err99

Never had one issue with my Canon 30D but earlier I got the much talked about err99 on my new (and expensive) Canon EOS 50D. It seems I’m far from alone as this thread on dpreview seems to show.

Canon…sort it, we sure payed enough for them. If it’s software then that’s fine get the firmware fixed, if it’s hardware then you are about to get a lot of very nasty phone calls from customers.

I’m hoping it doesn’t happen again, but based on what I’ve read from reports of users I guess I won’t be surprised if it happens again.