Canon 350d: 'Error99'!

[Hoady]

Had a bit of a problem on Saturday whereby my 350d went into meltdown and showed the code 'ERR99' on the LCD.

I was taking photos for the local free park run which basically involved finding a good spot and getting some images of the runners as they came past. The run was only a 5k so the vast majority of the 600+ runners arrived in a 10 or 15 minute window and once I started taking shots I didn't stop for this amount of time. However the problem only occurred after the first maybe 20 shots - the camera would focus but then would not release the shutter. Eventually I took the battery out for the third time and restarted and it was fine from then on. Must have missed 50 runners as I stood there like a clown trying to figure out what was wrong

I wasn't shooting RAW as the photos were only for hosting low res on the park run website, but could it be that I just took too many photos in too short a time for the camera to process?

Any other ideas what might have caused it, or how to avoid in future?!

[AndyKH]

Did happen to have a tamron 70-300mm lens on?

[Hoady]

No, it was a 75-300 Canon EF.

Oh, and the memory card was a Sandisk 8GB CF.

[siscar]

Usually it's a bad connection with the lens. Try cleaning the contacts

[Hoady]

OK thanks, will give it a go. It had happened the previous week too, and I imagined it would be a problem with the battery or memory stick.

[XG332]

Error 99 is a generic error, it can be a bad lens conection, corrupt firmware loads.
Best this to do would be to give it a clean and update the firmware, give it a full charge and a freshly formatted card.

If this doesnt work it may be a send of for repair job.

oli

[baz7175]

Do a search inside this forum, there's been numerous questions which we've by now collated almost every possible answer

[tinman0]

XG332 said:

Error 99 is a generic error, it can be a bad lens conection, corrupt firmware loads.
Best this to do would be to give it a clean and update the firmware, give it a full charge and a freshly formatted card.

If this doesnt work it may be a send of for repair job.

oli

I thought it was an unspecified communications error, rather than any old thing.

Clean the contacts and hope it goes away.

[XG332]

tinman0 said:

XG332 said:

Error 99 is a generic error, it can be a bad lens conection, corrupt firmware loads.
Best this to do would be to give it a clean and update the firmware, give it a full charge and a freshly formatted card.

If this doesnt work it may be a send of for repair job.

oli

I thought it was an unspecified communications error, rather than any old thing.

Clean the contacts and hope it goes away.

Have a read.
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/digital-discuss...

Error 99 is a genertic error term for when the camera's internal diagnostics cannot work out what is actually wrong. The only real solution is to send it back to canon for a service.

The most common problem is the contacts, the only 100% way to tell is by canon

Edited by XG332 on Tuesday 1st June 00:22