Battery + lock up

[Richardgb]

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Here's the scenario:

 

M Typ 240 with battery 2½ years old on a cool but not freezing day. The battery had perhaps 30% of its charge remaining and the camera had been functioning normally. An hour or so later, in a restaurant, one picture is taken and then almost immediately another. The red light bottom right flashes to show the image is being written to the card, then stays on permanently. No controls (shutter release, live view, play etc.) functioning. Try to switch the camera off but the light stays on, only going out some time after I've given up waiting. An hour or so after than, switch on camera and red light stays on, as before.

 

Wait until light goes out and swap for fresh battery. Everything functions normally (relief!). Put mis-behaving battery on charge, which takes about 2½ hours to complete. Put it back in the camera and everything functions normally.

 

Any ideas what could have caused the camera to lock-up? There was no problem with the image in the card, and no warning of the mis-behaving battery being too low to allow the camera to function (and even when this does happen, it's often possible to get several more exposures).

[LocalHero1953]

The M240 suffered from common problems like this in its early days, which was solved partly by successive firmware updates and IIRC partly by replacing some shutter assemblies. There was no common sequence of actions that led to lockups, but it often happened with LV or with taking several shots close together. Is your firmware up to date?

Edited October 30, 2017 by LocalHero1953

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[pop]

This scenario would be consistent with the camera having problems writing to the SD card. Have all pictures taken at about that time been correctly written to the card and can they be displayed without any problems?

[250swb]

I agree with Philipp, the card sounds like the prime culprit. Some cards work perfectly in some cameras, and some outright don't work or harbour glitches that take time before they show up.

[Richardgb]

The M240 suffered from common problems like this in its early days, which was solved partly by successive firmware updates and IIRC partly by replacing some shutter assemblies. There was no common sequence of actions that led to lockups, but it often happened with LV or with taking several shots close together. Is your firmware up to date?

 

Yes, fully up to date.

 

This scenario would be consistent with the camera having problems writing to the SD card. Have all pictures taken at about that time been correctly written to the card and can they be displayed without any problems?

 

Yes, all the pictures at the time and previously were recorded on the card and later read from the card. And after replacing the battery with a fresh one normal operation resumed, with the same card.

 

Thanks to all who've commented so far.

[dante]

I've had this happen from time to time, and I've often lost the entire contents of the buffer.

 

Your culprit is likely an SD card that does not write fast enough. This essentially crashes the camera's storage system. I had this happen on my 240 a lot with Eye-Fi cards. Never happened on my Mono 246. You need a Sandisk 95mb/sec card (that's the read speed; I'd bet that the write speed is a bit lower). I have had good luck with the Samsung EVO Pro SD cards that are 80 write/90 read (which I'm guessing is probably even faster than the Sandisk - but now discontinued). 

 

Also, format the card with SDFormatter, not the camera. That also seems to help.

 

Dante