How frequently does your R5 freeze/lock up?

How frequently does your R5 freeze/lock up?


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Thanks for the update. Sounds like a very generic reply. I wonder if Canon is now more aware of the problem? Unfortunately it seems that replacing the circuit board doesn’t always fix the issue.

How often is your camera freezing?

Hi Chris - I'm lucky it has only happened around 4 times. I'm sending off tomorrow so will keep you all posted.
 
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Hi Chris - I'm lucky it has only happened around 4 times. I'm sending off tomorrow so will keep you

Interesting. How many photos had you taken and how long had you owned the camera for?

I’m really hoping it’s a firmware issue, as I’m not very keen on the service centre taking apart the camera to replace the circuit board.
 
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Interesting. How many photos had you taken and how long had you owned the camera for?

I’m really hoping it’s a firmware issue, as I’m not very keen on the service centre taking apart the camera to replace the circuit board.

Hi Chris - I only got the camera (NEW) in late November 2020. I’m also using the new LPE6NH batteries x 2 + the GB-R10 grip.
As far as cards go I only use a SONY CFexpress Tough Memory Card – 128GB, 1480/1700 MB/s - this was also brand new.

I have only taken around 3k shots and the day this issue started I had only taken around 30 still shots, this was using the RF to EF converter and my Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM. Just one thing I thought of was that I had switched the focal length on the lens from Full to 3m - Not sure this had anything to do with it? I have seen others using all kinds of different lenses, including RF lenses and it still happens randomly. I also have a Canon RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM but, have not used it enough to see if happened with this lens.

Anyway, it's with Canon NZ now so I guess I will find out soon if it has been fixed - they said around a 10day turnaround. Will keep you posted.
 
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Just had my second freeze today. Screen and EVF went black and a battery pull was required, just like the last time it happened.

So far, about 8000 photos taken in total and it has never happened twice on the same shoot (usually a 2-4 hour period).

I’ve decided to wait for the next firmware update to see if that fixes things. If it starts happening multiple times per shoot after that, it will be going back to Canon.
 
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After 3 weeks I finally got mine back from Canon :cautious:. They seem to think it is a card issue as their diagnostics relied on them replicating the problem - So 3400 shots later and mixing all my settings up they came back with (it could have been a card write issue?) - My card which is new is a SONY CFexpress Tough Memory Card – 128GB, 1480/1700 MB/s. They said to buy a Scan disk card and see if it happens with that? - Waste of time and money sending it away! Don't bother sending away unless it is happening across different cards on a regular basis.
 
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I have had a few more freeze up's since I last posted, had to do my first battery pull after one yesterday. When I spoke to canon before they said to troubleshoot, however I don't have a ton of time or different cards to try. Super frustrating issue to have!

Been using the RF 100-500 lens, mostly in TV mode, with back button animal AF, freezes generally happen when pressing to focus. Both on LP-E6NH and LP-N batteries. Cards 28GB Lexar Professional CF express card and a 256 Lexar Professional 1667x SD Card. Latest was when trying to focus on show geese, screen went black and it didn't respond to anything until the battery was pulled. The top screen information stayed on it even after the camera was switched to off. Also I avoided updating to 1.2 firmware until recently and now I get photos with "?" that I cannot seem to open, not sure what that is about.

Seems that people have had vastly different results in sending in cameras, guessing I will just need to dedicate a whole day to troubleshooting and see what happens.
 
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I have had a few more freeze up's since I last posted, had to do my first battery pull after one yesterday. When I spoke to canon before they said to troubleshoot, however I don't have a ton of time or different cards to try. Super frustrating issue to have!

Been using the RF 100-500 lens, mostly in TV mode, with back button animal AF, freezes generally happen when pressing to focus. Both on LP-E6NH and LP-N batteries. Cards 28GB Lexar Professional CF express card and a 256 Lexar Professional 1667x SD Card. Latest was when trying to focus on show geese, screen went black and it didn't respond to anything until the battery was pulled. The top screen information stayed on it even after the camera was switched to off. Also I avoided updating to 1.2 firmware until recently and now I get photos with "?" that I cannot seem to open, not sure what that is about.

Seems that people have had vastly different results in sending in cameras, guessing I will just need to dedicate a whole day to troubleshooting and see what happens.
That’s frustrating... hopefully the new firmware that is due out very soon should help with the weird ‘?’ You are getting on some photos and the freezing too!
 
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Australisblue

EOS R5
CR Pro
Aug 26, 2016
24
13
I have not had my R5 lockup yet (although it’s only been used lightly) however I have had a couple of times where I’ve needed to remove the battery to get the wifi working again (so I guess you could say the wifi has locked up vs the whole camera). The iPhone app throws up an error that it failed to connect (bluetooth still seems to work). I tried a few other things, swiping the app closed, rebooting the phone, turning the R5 off and on, none of which worked but pulling the battery briefly fixed the problem immediately. If it happens again I might try disabling and re-enabling the wifi in the camera settings to see if that helps.

The wifi works even when the camera power switch is off so I am guessing perhaps that is why just cycling the power switch doesn’t work vs pulling the battery.
 
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digigal

Traveling the world one step at a time.
CR Pro
Aug 26, 2014
283
586
Posting to follow up on the crashes my R5 has had. Because of my problem, I returned it to Canon who was unable to identify the cause but replaced the motherboard. Afterward the problem still occurred but because of upcoming trips, I did not f/u with Canon. First trip to Yellowstone ended up being essentially a landscape trip because of limited and/or very slow moving wildlife that did not require a fast shutter speed. Therefore I was using my 100-400 generally, occas 24-105, and the low speed continuous mode with a single back button focus. Temp was cold, cold, cold--reaching 25 degree high while we were there for about 10 d. No crashes. Hoping my issue was solved, we headed to Alaska for eagles 3 days after returning from Yellowstone (warmer but still below 40 the whole time). The first day I shot ~2500 pic and had 4 crashes--ugh!!! I had changed the mode to Hi speed continuous but everything else the same, BBF, 100-400, Canon Adapter, canon batteries, etc. The only factor I had not looked at was increasing the shooting speed so I increased the speed to H+ (Hi Speed Continuous + Mode) and after that I had a single crash for the next 8000-10000 pic I shot. I've since shot another 3000K bird pictures with no crashes. I do think my crashes seem to be associated with using the Hi Speed Continuous mode and it is almost ameliorated by switching to the H+ or Lo Speed.
Just my latest update on where things stand with me.
Catherine
Now I need to spend time developing muscle memory for where I finally can program my buttons rather than all this other BS!!!
 
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digigal

Traveling the world one step at a time.
CR Pro
Aug 26, 2014
283
586
I've noticed no difference among the 3 ProGrade 128 GB CFE and the SanDisk 128 CFE (all type B). I studied that and the battery issue (R5, R, 7DMII Canon batteries and charge levels) in my initial rounds of testing before the motherboard was replaced. I've only used Canon batteries and notice no difference in occurrence of crashes depending on charge level. Use only Canon adapter. Generally shoot without a TC but haven't noticed increased occurrence of crashes on using one. Have tried multiple configurations of BBF options and noted no effect whether it was mapped to * or AF-ON or "BOX" button. Tried one vs 2 BBF buttons to try to cut down on potential factors and that's when I noted it seemed to correlate to Mode and since going back to 2 BBF that hasn't changed. (Also many other noted bird photographers were using 2 BBF and weren't having this problem.
Catherine
 
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Body early series. After several lockups in 6000 shots, last week Canon service replaced the motherboard of my R5. Different lenses, cards, batteries. No common factor found. From new I had doubts about the effectiveness of IBIS, first impression is that it works as advertised now. EDIT. Still problems with IBIS after main print replacement. Canon service replaced the CMOS sensor now. Has to do with sensor readout.
 
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digigal

Traveling the world one step at a time.
CR Pro
Aug 26, 2014
283
586
Body early series. After several lockups in 6000 shots, last week Canon service replaced the motherboard of my R5. Different lenses, cards, batteries. No common factor found. From new I had doubts about the effectiveness of IBIS, first impression is that it works as advertised now.
Mine was an early series body too but replacing the MB did not solve the problem. As above, the only thing I can correlate my crashes to currently is shooting in the Hi Speed Mode. Doesnt seem to occur in the H+ Speed Mode or the Low Speed Mode.
Catherine
 
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Aug 27, 2019
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Mine was an early series body too but replacing the MB did not solve the problem. As above, the only thing I can correlate my crashes to currently is shooting in the Hi Speed Mode. Doesnt seem to occur in the H+ Speed Mode or the Low Speed Mode.
Catherine
Stable not using H+ further confirms my suspicion that these lockup up are a media issue.

Canon is clearly polling the card(s) for the following:
  • Availability - Is there a card present?
  • Current and total capacity
  • read/write state
  • Likely temp
Because preventing data loss is the primary goal of any storage team Canon's engineers likely do not have the capacity for recovery from a failed poll to or from the card. They leave the user and the camera waiting for that poll to complete and only a loss of power will release the code loop. Canon can fix this by running a timeout and a watchdog on the storage service but if there is a failure the data being recorded at the time will for sure be lost, for those that are experiencing this issue that might be preferred because the data is likely lost when pulling the battery anyway.

I suspect the reason Canon has not done the simple fix yet is because they have not been able to reproduce the issue in house. I run into this issue all the time with NVR's and Cameras that users have tampered with but never tell us that until we are on site...

In the end Canon really did not do themselves any favors by making the dual card slots on the R5 different. The combinations for Slot A (CFexpress) and Slot B (SD) on the R5 means that people can be running what has to be an almost endless number of variations of brands, speed, and capacity of card. There is no way to test all those combinations effectively.

I have never had a lockup on my R5 even after almost 15k images and hours of 8k and 4k footage. My R5 is a day 1 release with a serial number in the 900's. I have always used a Sony Tough 128GB CFE card purchased from local brick and mortar shop(I did make the mistake of getting the Prograde 128GB Gold that is not fast enough for 8K Raw) and 64GB Sony Tough Card that was a warranty replacement directly from Sony. I always perform a low level format after each image\footage offload and so far I have not had any issues.

I have a colleague that has an R5 and has had loads of lock ups and I am looking forward to when we can actually shoot together again so we can swap media and see if the issue is with the SanDisk 128GB he bought for a good deal on Amazon or if the issue is his body.

That all said the responsibility to make this right is still on Canon, they need to come up with a solution to deal with all the possible combinations for cards that users have.

A locked up $4K USD\$6K CDN Camera is not a great look.
 
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digigal

Traveling the world one step at a time.
CR Pro
Aug 26, 2014
283
586
Stable not using H+ further confirms my suspicion that these lockup up are a media issue.

Canon is clearly polling the card(s) for the following:
  • Availability - Is there a card present?
  • Current and total capacity
  • read/write state
  • Likely temp
Because preventing data loss is the primary goal of any storage team Canon's engineers likely do not have the capacity for recovery from a failed poll to or from the card. They leave the user and the camera waiting for that poll to complete and only a loss of power will release the code loop. Canon can fix this by running a timeout and a watchdog on the storage service but if there is a failure the data being recorded at the time will for sure be lost, for those that are experiencing this issue that might be preferred because the data is likely lost when pulling the battery anyway.

I suspect the reason Canon has not done the simple fix yet is because they have not been able to reproduce the issue in house. I run into this issue all the time with NVR's and Cameras that users have tampered with but never tell us that until we are on site...

In the end Canon really did not do themselves any favors by making the dual card slots on the R5 different. The combinations for Slot A (CFexpress) and Slot B (SD) on the R5 means that people can be running what has to be an almost endless number of variations of brands, speed, and capacity of card. There is no way to test all those combinations effectively.

I have never had a lockup on my R5 even after almost 15k images and hours of 8k and 4k footage. My R5 is a day 1 release with a serial number in the 900's. I have always used a Sony Tough 128GB CFE card purchased from local brick and mortar shop(I did make the mistake of getting the Prograde 128GB Gold that is not fast enough for 8K Raw) and 64GB Sony Tough Card that was a warranty replacement directly from Sony. I always perform a low level format after each image\footage offload and so far I have not had any issues.

I have a colleague that has an R5 and has had loads of lock ups and I am looking forward to when we can actually shoot together again so we can swap media and see if the issue is with the SanDisk 128GB he bought for a good deal on Amazon or if the issue is his body.

That all said the responsibility to make this right is still on Canon, they need to come up with a solution to deal with all the possible combinations for cards that users have.

A locked up $4K USD\$6K CDN Camera is not a great look.
What I was saying is that it appears that my camera crashes when I am shooting in the middle of the 3 mechanical options. If I shoot in the fastest of the mechanical modes, the H+ (Hi Speed Continuous +) I don't have crashes nor do I have crashes if I shoot in the lowest mechanical speed (Low Speed Continuous). It's only when I'm shooting in the middle one: Hi Speed Continuous that I have the crashes. That sounds confusing because there is a faster speed than the Hi Speed Continuous which is the one with the "+" . In summary:
Electronic only(fastest)= Not tried
Mechanical:
Hi + Speed = No crashes
Hi Speed = Crashes
Low Speed = No Crashes

Catherine
 
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What I was saying is that it appears that my camera crashes when I am shooting in the middle of the 3 mechanical options. If I shoot in the fastest of the mechanical modes, the H+ (Hi Speed Continuous +) I don't have crashes nor do I have crashes if I shoot in the lowest mechanical speed (Low Speed Continuous). It's only when I'm shooting in the middle one: Hi Speed Continuous that I have the crashes. That sounds confusing because there is a faster speed than the Hi Speed Continuous which is the one with the "+" . In summary:
Electronic only(fastest)= Not tried
Mechanical:
Hi + Speed = No crashes
Hi Speed = Crashes
Low Speed = No Crashes

Catherine
Thanks Catherine for clarifying, the behavior really is bizarre. I still think there is something going on in the Storage service but it less obvious now that you are only seeing it in Hi Speed. Mind if I pass that info off to CPS?

Quick Question: Has the Camera ever frozen up not taking photos? Just on and doing nothing?

I really do hope Canon addresses this issue.

BTW I love your images, this Camera should show you more respect:)
 
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Mine was an early series body too but replacing the MB did not solve the problem. As above, the only thing I can correlate my crashes to currently is shooting in the Hi Speed Mode. Doesnt seem to occur in the H+ Speed Mode or the Low Speed Mode.
Catherine
Last 2 lockups occurred in low speed mode, Writing to both card slots. I have one sandisk CFE card. Crashes with a lexar or sony card in the sd card slot.
 

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Just had my first “Freeze” since I bought the R5 three months ago.

Using the 100-500mm in Manual mode, Servo AF, High speed, Animal Eye-Focus, mechanical shutter recording RAW on both SD and CFExpress.

The CFExpress card is a Lexar professional 128GB 1750 MB/s, the SD card is a Lexar professional 128GB 1000x 150 MB/s.

Switching camera on and off didn’t resolve the problem, had to revert to removing battery from camera body and reinserting it for the ‘freeze’ to go away.

Hope it doesn’t happen again at a “vital moment”.
 
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