R3 Freezing Up

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Well here we go again. I had high hopes that with the R3 Canon would have addressed the freezing up issue that affects the R5. I found out yesterday I was wrong. I was shooting a youth basketball game (grandson) when multiple times the R3 froze up. It was more severe than anything I've experienced with the R5. The rear screen totally froze and the on-off switch became non-functional. I had to remove the battery to reset it and unfortunately, unlike when this happens with the R5 it kept repeating the problem.

When I got home I did a quick internet search and found another user on a Canon forum with the same problem. He sent the body in to Canon, they reset the firmware and sent it back. The same thing happened again to him.

Fortunately, this was just a recreational shoot for me. I'll be very upset if it happens during a "real" ballgame.

I was using a Transcend 256gb card. I am going to try using a SanDisk card and see if that helps.

Starting this thread so that when (not if) others experience this, they can share their information.
 
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unfocused

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Meanwhile the various 1DX’s are still giving trouble free service. But thanks for beta testing all this new stuff for us! ;)
Yes. I never had any problem with the 1DX III and CFExpress cards of any brand.
 
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Yes. I never had any problem with the 1DX III and CFExpress cards of any brand.
Without wishing to push the thread off topic I find it very interesting that Canon have very deliberately and persistently not referred to the R3 as the new 1 series. Bearing in mind ultimate reliability is the baseline for the 1 series I am happy to wait for an R1 as long as it takes just so long as that reliability is set in stone when that 'new 1 series' does arrive.
 
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Joules

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Well here we go again. I had high hopes that with the R3 Canon would have addressed the freezing up issue that affects the R5. I found out yesterday I was wrong. I was shooting a youth basketball game (grandson) when multiple times the R3 froze up. It was more severe than anything I've experienced with the R5. The rear screen totally froze and the on-off switch became non-functional. I had to remove the battery to reset it and unfortunately, unlike when this happens with the R5 it kept repeating the problem.

When I got home I did a quick internet search and found another user on a Canon forum with the same problem. He sent the body in to Canon, they reset the firmware and sent it back. The same thing happened again to him.

Fortunately, this was just a recreational shoot for me. I'll be very upset if it happens during a "real" ballgame.

I was using a Transcend 256gb card. I am going to try using a SanDisk card and see if that helps.

Starting this thread so that when (not if) others experience this, they can share their information.
Don't forget to relay that information directly to Canon, if you have an interest in getting it fixed.

I think Canon aims to unify the software as much as they can across all their bodies now that so much functionality just uses the main sensor. Not surprising that bugs carry over with with that.

It probably isn't really one issue, but many small ones that are hard to reproduce and hard ro discern based only on the symptoms and user reports. Otherwise it would be fixed already.
 
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AlanF

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Well here we go again. I had high hopes that with the R3 Canon would have addressed the freezing up issue that affects the R5. I found out yesterday I was wrong. I was shooting a youth basketball game (grandson) when multiple times the R3 froze up. It was more severe than anything I've experienced with the R5. The rear screen totally froze and the on-off switch became non-functional. I had to remove the battery to reset it and unfortunately, unlike when this happens with the R5 it kept repeating the problem.

When I got home I did a quick internet search and found another user on a Canon forum with the same problem. He sent the body in to Canon, they reset the firmware and sent it back. The same thing happened again to him.

Fortunately, this was just a recreational shoot for me. I'll be very upset if it happens during a "real" ballgame.

I was using a Transcend 256gb card. I am going to try using a SanDisk card and see if that helps.

Starting this thread so that when (not if) others experience this, they can share their information.
Have you extensively customised the buttons?
 
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multiple times the R3 froze up [...] The rear screen totally froze and the on-off switch became non-functional. I had to remove the battery to reset it
My R3 was also freezing up, but in a different way. For me, I sometimes found myself being unable to move my 1-point AF square while in one-shot mode.

My issue was intermittent and appeared random, but I noticed the AF point often froze near the bottom left quadrant of my viewfinder. I tried moving it with the "multi-controller" (my 1Dx habit) but it would just get totally stuck. All I could do is power off and reboot. Yet, unlike in your case, my power on/off button still worked for me.

For greater clarity, my freeze situation looked like this
1642371533517.png
And not this, where I would expect to see a premediated lock

1642371495230.png

At the time, my AF box colour was "white", and not "orange" or any other colour when it happened. Yesterday I "factory reset" my R3, and I have yet to experience that again, or a litany of other AF issues that I was experiencing. I'm now using the AF-ON button to move my single AF-point around.

I hear you unfocused on your reliability concerns, and my first wedding for the season takes place in 7-weeks!!! Sadly, my overall experience with my R3 model over the past three weeks has not made me feel comfortable or assured, but hopefully that trust factor will develop sooner than later. It's nice to have novel bells and whistles for added creativity (and I suppose profit margins for Canon shareholders), but they ought never to come at the expense of basic operations (in my humble opinion).
 

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@Jeffrey Meyer found resetting the camera to help significantly. I suspect that was the thrust of the query from @AlanF as well. Since the settings can be written to a card, perhaps a reset is worth a try. See if there are freezes with default settings. If not, restore your full settings and if you experience freezing, there’s a software cause (likely resulting from a firmware bug). If you’re willing to put in the effort of troubleshooting by changing or reverting to default individual or small groups of settings, you may find the cause.
 
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AlanF

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@Jeffrey Meyer found resetting the camera to help significantly. I suspect that was the thrust of the query from @AlanF as well. Since the settings can be written to a card, perhaps a reset is worth a try. See if there are freezes with default settings. If not, restore your full settings and if you experience freezing, there’s a software cause (likely resulting from a firmware bug). If you’re willing to put in the effort of troubleshooting by changing or reverting to default individual or small groups of settings, you may find the cause.
@digigal had freezes of the R5 for a year, which stopped after she removed some customisation. I use minimal customisation.
 
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unfocused

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@Jeffrey Meyer found resetting the camera to help significantly. I suspect that was the thrust of the query from @AlanF as well. Since the settings can be written to a card, perhaps a reset is worth a try. See if there are freezes with default settings. If not, restore your full settings and if you experience freezing, there’s a software cause (likely resulting from a firmware bug). If you’re willing to put in the effort of troubleshooting by changing or reverting to default individual or small groups of settings, you may find the cause.
I think my first option is going to be to switch out cards. In fact, today I went to the park and took some shots of a Kingfisher my wife has been shooting for the past couple of weeks. I used a SanDisk 128 GB card with no problem. Also yesterday when it froze up for the fourth time I switched to the SD card and it did not freeze up. If I get another freeze up using the SanDisk card then I'll save the setting to the card and try the factory reset, which by the way is what CPS did with the R3 that the Canon Forum participant sent to them for repair. Unfortunately it didn't help in his case.

I've been skeptical of those that claimed the R5 freezes were card related, but I'm starting to become a believer. I haven't had any problems with the R3 previously, but I don't really know if I've been consistently using SanDisk in the body. I'm going to start paying closer attention. BTW, I know I've also used ProGrade with the R3 with no problems (but have had freeze ups with the R5 using ProGrade). Honestly, the R5 freeze ups are a nuisance but manageable, since a simple on/off or at worse removing the battery solves the problem. The frustration yesterday is that it happened four or five times in a row after just shooting maybe 10-20 frames and the fact that the on/off switch did nothing kind of freaked me out.

BTW, here is the link to the Canon Forum discussion.

And, here is a link to a Fred Miranda discussion mentioned on the Canon Forum.
 
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Could be the card. I use SanDisk in my cameras, including the R and R3, and have never had a freeze (the failure of the main PCB in my 1D X notwithstanding).

These are complex cameras with many settings and as I’ve pointed out before, seemingly unrelated settings can cause issues, e.g., enabling orientation-linked AF point borking AFMA on the 1D X.
 
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My R3 froze twice in a month. Simple battery pop out and in fixed it. This is a higher frequency than I experience with either of my R5s. I probably get an R5 freeze once every 6 months, but I haven't experienced one in at least that long just now.

Me and another guy started collecting reports of the settings people were using when they experienced R5 freezes. Lots of theories were put forth. It is not consistent with cards, lenses, button settings, external conditions, modes, or any other factor so far.

One somewhat consistent trend is that people find that the freezes happened more frequently at the beginning of their ownership and then became less frequent over time. This might be due to improved firmware, though.

The freezing was not a major problem for me. Downgrading to a 1DX III would have been much more annoying than dealing with the freezes.
 
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Could be the card. I use SanDisk in my cameras, including the R and R3, and have never had a freeze (the failure of the main PCB in my 1D X notwithstanding).

These are complex cameras with many settings and as I’ve pointed out before, seemingly unrelated settings can cause issues, e.g., enabling orientation-linked AF point borking AFMA on the 1D X.

Can't say much about the R3 causality, but we had enough data on the R5 to know it wasn't the cards. Freezes happened on all of the brands.

If it helps someone, the two freezes I had on the R3 were with a Sony 512GB card and an Angelbird 660 XT. In both cases it was very shortly after turning the camera on. I've been down enough rabbit holes on the R5 to not have a great deal of confidence it's a simple causal relationship. It's all starting to feel like an overly-complex software issue rather than a relationship to one factor.
 
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unfocused

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...The freezing was not a major problem for me. Downgrading to a 1DX III would have been much more annoying than dealing with the freezes.
If it's an occasional event, I would agree. My big concern is that it will happen to me during a game and it keeps malfunctioning. As someone on one of the other forums posted, it would be a huge problem if it happens while the bride is walking down the aisle with her father. (I don't shoot weddings, but I can certainly sympathize.)
 
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My R3 froze twice in a month. Simple battery pop out and in fixed it. This is a higher frequency than I experience with either of my R5s. I probably get an R5 freeze once every 6 months, but I haven't experienced one in at least that long just now.

Me and another guy started collecting reports of the settings people were using when they experienced R5 freezes. Lots of theories were put forth. It is not consistent with cards, lenses, button settings, external conditions, modes, or any other factor so far.

One somewhat consistent trend is that people find that the freezes happened more frequently at the beginning of their ownership and then became less frequent over time. This might be due to improved firmware, though.

The freezing was not a major problem for me. Downgrading to a 1DX III would have been much more annoying than dealing with the freezes.
It sounds to me like timings are an issue. Thats been an issue with cards almost forever and Canon has had to make firmware changes more than once. Some combination of events causes timings to get out of order and it freezes. Obviously, finding the exact cause is very difficult. It kinda reminds me of Toyota looking for issues with accelerators getting stuck. I believe that they never found the issue other than floor mats.
 
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I think my first option is going to be to switch out cards. In fact, today I went to the park and took some shots of a Kingfisher my wife has been shooting for the past couple of weeks. I used a SanDisk 128 GB card with no problem. Also yesterday when it froze up for the fourth time I switched to the SD card and it did not freeze up. If I get another freeze up using the SanDisk card then I'll save the setting to the card and try the factory reset, which by the way is what CPS did with the R3 that the Canon Forum participant sent to them for repair. Unfortunately it didn't help in his case.

I've been skeptical of those that claimed the R5 freezes were card related, but I'm starting to become a believer. I haven't had any problems with the R3 previously, but I don't really know if I've been consistently using SanDisk in the body. I'm going to start paying closer attention. BTW, I know I've also used ProGrade with the R3 with no problems (but have had freeze ups with the R5 using ProGrade). Honestly, the R5 freeze ups are a nuisance but manageable, since a simple on/off or at worse removing the battery solves the problem. The frustration yesterday is that it happened four or five times in a row after just shooting maybe 10-20 frames and the fact that the on/off switch did nothing kind of freaked me out.

BTW, here is the link to the Canon Forum discussion.

And, here is a link to a Fred Miranda discussion mentioned on the Canon Forum.

Sounds like some of the problems I have been starting to see on my Android phone - it randomly decides not to connect on Bluetooth and nobody can find rhyme or reason to it. It's grown worse over the last couple of Android versions.

I have a suspision that it's related to uninitialized variables, and using the device (the R3 in your case) and factory resetting gets those variables set to 'sensible' values and the the problem becomes different or goes away.

Software complexity growing over the heads of the development and verification teams, really.
 
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Sporgon

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As someone on one of the other forums posted, it would be a huge problem if it happens while the bride is walking down the aisle with her father. (I don't shoot weddings, but I can certainly sympathize.)
Omg - you mean even two card slots wouldn’t save you ?! :oops:
 
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unfocused

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Omg - you mean even two card slots wouldn’t save you ?! :oops:
Not if the camera freezes up.

Bride and father start walking down the aisle. Camera freezes. You frantically switch it off. Nothing happens. Still frozen and on. You yank the battery. Put the battery back in. And then...a) you try again and it immediately freezes or b) you switch from "record separately" to recording to the SD slot and maybe that works.

Bride and her father are already at the altar.

Option 3 would be to immediately yank the lens off the R3, yank the lens off your second body (R5), put the lens on the R5 and start shooting. Bride and father are just walking past you.
 
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