Wonky Camera? Try This First

I had a camera go wonky on me a ways back. It was my first DSLR, a 6-megapixel Konica-Minolta 7D that I bought used in 2006. It served me very well for a few years but started developing "glitches" at some point. I can't even tell you exactly all that went wrong or when, but I remember waiting for a train to pass and pressing the shutter at just the right moment only to have the camera complain that there was "NO LENS ATTACHED."

Portrait of Xander age 13 made with the old K-M 7D, which
actually had a lens on it at the time

Now, I am absentminded—I drove away from my friends' house last weekend with the Fuji X-T1 sitting on top of the car for example. I haven't done that in a very long time, but only because I'm usually careful to set the camera down on the hood of the car, right in front of the windshield on the driver's side. It's hard to drive away with the camera sitting on the car when it's right there in your line of sight. The X-T1 is all right, by the way—I noticed the strap flapping around before I got up to speed.

But my K-M 7D was wrong about itself. I'm not that absent-minded. I have never once tried to take a picture with no lens on an interchangeable-lens camera. Taking the lens off and remounting it solved the problem and made the camera happy. But by that time the train had passed, of course. The world is not the poorer, but I was annoyed at the time.

That was the start; the 7D got more and more "glitchy" until it was nearly impossible to use. I retired it with great regret; I really bonded with that camera.

Restart your camera
Our friend Carl Weese wrote a very valuable article here a while back called "Special For You: Custom Modes." When I got my new-used Panasonic GX8, with which I am having very many troubles, he recommended that I take the time to set the Custom Modes. An underused but very handy feature, Custom Modes allow you to program a suite of settings into the camera and assign the setup to a single command or dial position—very handy when you want to set the controls to your own most-used combinations instantly and repeatedly. (I'm sure some of you have been using Custom Modes for years and just as sure that others have never tried them or even thought about them.)

Recently Carl wrote to me that his current camera had developed an annoying glitch—again and again it spontaneously turned on touchscreen AF, even though he had told it to do no such thing.

The cure was a reset. Most cameras have a menu command to reset all the settings back to "factory default."

This makes sense, when you think about it—most computery-type thingys need a reset every now and then. You reboot your computer and restart your tablet or smartphone and refresh your Internet browser from time to time. Why not cameras?

In Carl's case, a reset cured the camera of the spontaneously-appearing rogue command. Of course, he did lose all his Custom Settings, too, so he had to spend some time setting them up again. Custom Modes are an invest-and-repay type of thing—it takes some time and work to set them up, but your effort is returned to you many times over.

A reset is a good idea when you buy a used camera, too. You have no idea what settings the previous owner chose unless you go through every single one of the camera's zillion and three settings. Even then you'll probably miss one. So it's a good idea to reset the camera and start over again.

As Carl puts it, any unexpected problem calls for a reset first, before rejecting the sample. Your broken camera might not be broken at all.

Makes me wonder about that old Konica-Minolta. Would it have been okay if I had simply reset it to the factory defaults? I didn't know to try that back then. You know, I do still have it in storage somewhere. Hmmmmm....

Mike
(Thanks to Carl)

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Time to restart
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dennis Mook: "I had never before used the available custom settings feature on any of my cameras until I recently purchased an Olympus E-M1 II. Olympus offers three custom settings. I set the first for those settings I use the majority of the time using aperture priority mode, the second centered around stopping action and for fast moving objects with shutter priority and the third in such a manner that if I hand the camera to just about anyone, all he or she would have to do is point it and press the shutter and a successful image will be recorded. Makes it easy when handing the camera to someone and not having to try to explain how the camera works and what they need to do. I now am sold on the custom settings feature as it allows me to instantly make numerous changes during fast moving situations. Just a click and it's all done!"

Speed: "In the early personal computer days the first solution for a computer problem (after a re-boot) was to remove and reseat all the boards. You fixed the NO LENS ATTACHED problem by 'reseating' the lens."

Richard Jones: "Regarding having to reconfigure your Custom Modes following a camera reset: If you keep your configurations in a notebook (I use three Custom Modes), it's rather quick to re-configure them."

Keith B: "Considering the labor involved in restoring a complete suite of settings, plus the bizarre settings the camera manufacturer sets as default(small basic JPEG, Auto White Balance, etc.), one of the most important measures of 'how good' a camera is is: Will I ever have to reset it? Four point five years with Nikon D3's: Never. Four point five years with a Nikon D800: Once, but I'm not sure I had to go as far as a full reset that time. Four years with a Fujifilm XE-1: Never. I like never."

Ernie Van Veen: "I once bought a used 7D and never bothered (or thought) to reset it. It was only some months later, looking at my recently updated portfolio online, that I noticed the EXIF for each photo displayed copyright and authorship information for a complete stranger. Most embarrassing. I have overcome this problem by only purchasing new cameras. So far it's working beautifully."

Comments

[Keith]

My then new Nikon D90 did this on occasion a few weeks after I purchased it except it didn't give a "no lens attached" error, it simply failed to function with AF or shutter release. I had to remove and reattach the lens to correct. After multiple occurrences over a month or two, I removed the lens and used a pencil eraser to clean the contacts on the lens and body, no issues since.

[john robison]

Articles like these confirm all the more why I don't want to give up my four decade old OM-1. Imagine! A camera that actually takes a picture when you release the shutter. And you don't even have to be holding your mouth just right.

Sorry Mike, couldn't stop myself from some good-natured ribbing.

[robert e]

It's funny how many high tech "glitches" have low tech causes, like Grace Hopper's celebrated moth. Anyone in IT support eventually learns to check for the "not-plugged-in" bug and it's variant, "not-connected", as first steps in troubleshooting (this may happen less often these days, but there are parallels even in battery powered and wirelessly connected gadgets).

Anyway, the point is that when ILCs and lenses stop communicating, it's sometimes (not always) due to poor electrical contact between body and lens. I'm sure you ruled that out in the case of your Konica, but it is one of the first things to check for, and something to put on the maintenance checklist. Pencil erasers and alcohol-on-Q-tip are traditional DIY contact-cleaning methods, though they won't cure mechanical alignment or pressure issues.

Cleaning the contacts worked for my Canon 20D and 50/1.8, but I couldn't say how often "no lens" errors have a simple mechanical cause vs a software issue. (Sounds like a question for Roger Cicala?)

[Tom Kwas]

I had a Nikon D-90 that was a peach, but I kept getting "error" warnings that went away when I unlocked the lens, turned it a little, and then turned it back to lock it. Turned out to be a problem with the plastic mount on the 18-105 Nikkor zoom. For a company that steeped in decent lenses, I don't know how they could economize on that, on such a good lens. How much would the metal mount have been, 5 bucks during manufacture? You can't imagine how many times I've heard people asking if they could get a metal mount retro fit on that lens.

I find some of my micro 4/3rds stuff resetting itself all the time, finally traced to various pieces of my flesh hitting buttons on the back because the damn camera is too small! No need to make it that small, I'd be perfectly happy with a micro 4/3rds camera that was the size of a thinner Pentax MX body. Please!

[Richard Jones]

I've used Custom Modes since my Panasonic G3 (now GX8).

A nice feature of Custom Modes is that if you make any changes for a particular scene - ISO for example - your default ISO returns on the next camera startup.

- Richard

[Rob de Loe]

The ability to set up a "custom mode" that saves your crucial settings is something I used all the time, every time, on my Sony A7/A7R cameras (which have two spots on the dial for this) and on my Ricoh GR (which had three spots on the dial!) This is such a crucial, basic feature. It's a real failing in the design of the Fuji X-T2 (and its ilk) that you can't do this. Yes, you can save custom settings for JPEG -- but I never shoot JPEG so that's useless to me.

I want the ability to save all the basic things that aren't on dials so I can "reset" to my usual settings every time. For example, things like shutter type (mechanical, electronic, or both); image format (3:2, 1:1, etc.); image type and quality (RAW, RAW+Fine, etc.) It doesn't have to be on a dial -- just give me the ability to assign a function key or fill a space on the Quick menu! C'mon Fuji. Kaizen time!

[Frank Grygier]

I am a GX8 user. What issues are you having?

[Thomas Rink]

I had my D800 lock up once during image review, such that the 4-way controller was dead. Taking the battery out for a couple of seconds fixed this, but didn't improve my faith in the camera. Bugs like this or the "phenomenon" described by Carl Weese hint at poor software engineering and QA practice. Given that cameras are not exactly cheap, we customers deserve better.

In case of your KM7D (intermittent failure), however, I'd suspect that it was just worn out - for example, failure of electromechanical contacts. My D90 had a similar problem, it would sometimes reject the memory card and stubbornly display 'CHA'. Ejecting and reinserting the card several times always fixed this, probably slight corrosion on the contacts.

Best, Thomas

[DB]

I don't think I ever "set my camera down" outside home. I always have a bag (usually a small Domke) slung across me. Camera comes out, camera goes back in.

[Michael Roche]

Mike sorry to hear you are having problems with your GX8, would you care to share them as many of us on TOP were tempted to get this camera based on your high opinion of it.

[Thomas Paul McCann]

your old Konica 7d had custom modes which i used frequently. (I bought it on your say-so and like you became inordinately fond of it.)

It was replaced with a Nikon which had the most brain dead custon mode function imagineable.. While, yes, you coud set custome modes but having called one up and then making an adjustment to thr camera settinfg, that ajustment became baked in to the cutim mode in operation rendering the whole concept of custom modes inoperable

[Roger Bradbury]

You might well need another battery for your 7D, and you can still get them, as I found recently. It's the same as my not quite so old Pentax K20D.

That camera has a couple of issues; the front control wheel doesn't always work, and in live view the image stabilisation makes the sensor shake around, but only with one lens.

The same lens is fine on another Pentax. As a result, I don't use live view much. I don't usually need the front wheel while shooting, as I tend to stay in aperture priority most of the time.

[Merle]

...well, that just makes one wonder why you can't backup your custom settings - and/or all settings, for that matter - and then be able to restore them at a future time. It's a small computer, therefore it should have a backup capability.

[Kodachromeguy]

Factory reset? Should I do that with my new/old Hasselblad? Now where is that command found...

[You laugh, but Hasselblads SHOULD have had a factory reset. I forget the specifics but you could jam a Hassie by looking at it wrong. I *hated* those things...probably because during my brief career as an assistant I had to load and unload the backs for a sadistic boss just a little faster than was humanly possible. And when one of his bodies jammed he'd toss it to an assistant and snarl "fix this! FAST!"

If only it had had a reset command! :-) --MJ]

[Eric Rose]

On my G85 I have C1 for video settings and C2 for still photography. I wish I could save them to a card so I could reload them quickly if I had to reset my camera.

[schralp]

Can't the user settings be saved to a card and restored after a reset....?

[Thomas Paul McCann]

Why not type out your custom modes and then takle a picture of them with your phone. Saved in phone memory, or Google photgos, they will always be available
( Its not that I can't spell its just that I can't type)

[Steve Smith]

I had a camera go wonky on me a ways back

Sorry to be pedantic, but how can you have a singular plural?

["A ways back" is slang for "in the past." --Mike]

[Bear.]

My Nikon D3 just passed its 9th birthday and has never missed a beat.

[Frank Figlozzi]

The backup capability - as mentioned by Merle - is exactly right. We should be able to back up all our menu settings to external storage (say an SD card) just as we back up our computers to external drives. And, since a backup is useless without a restore capability, we should be able to restore from that device also. I don't know of any camera manufacturer that provides that capability.

My (laborious) solution? I've created a large spreadsheet of all the menu entries, my custom settings and the reasons for them. Do I keep it up to date? Of course not. To do that I'd have to update the spreadsheet every time I changed a setting.

[Brian Taylor]

'Very many troubles' sounds ominous. Hope you get it sorted soon.

[Ken N]

The Konica-Minolta A1, A2 and 7D had an outstanding implementation of memory recalls. But the best of the best really has to be the original Olympus E-1 with four recalls. The camera configures to the saved setting and then lets you do whatever you want and keeps all your changes until you choose a recall again.

Canon's implementation is infuriating as the camera will either lose your adhoc adjustments on a power off or will overwrite the memory as you go. Add insult to injury, you can't recall a configuration and then change exposure modes without things really going sideways on you. I understand why few Canon owners use the custom memories.

I love how good the pictures are from my 6D, but find it to be the last camera I actually want to use.

[D. Hufford]

Problems with a Panasonic GXx?.....easy Dave...no smart-assed snarky remarks about "Have you checked the trouble shooting section in the VCR users manual?" Well, at least I am not alone in having tons of problems with a Panny GX camera.

I seem to remember, back in the days before the use of film meant your photos were automatically art, that I had very few problems with 35mm cameras. Or even instamatics. Or Polaroids. They just worked. The only real problems I remember were with a few Oly rangefinders I bought used in Shinjuku in the early/mid 90s. One or two had sticky aperture blades and ended up being discarded. Out $40 or so each. With digital, I have been much less lucky.

Speaking of modern camera problems, since January, I have been going month by month through TOP. It is quite interesting re-reading those old posts and comments and seeing how accurate or inaccurate some of them were at predicting the future.

One post I ran across this afternoon from Dec 2010 began:

"The X100 Will Be Perfect

So—idle thought—what do you suppose the chances are that the Fuji X100 will get here and not have some big glaring distressing dismaying stupid flaw in it that ruins the whole thing?"

Of course the chances turned out to be zero. The stuck aperture blades, the dead-turtle-frozen-in-molasses slow autofocus, the useless manual focus, the freezes, just to name a few of the dismayingly stupid flaws the original had.

Another reason to stick with a camera as long as it continues to do the job you ask of it. New ones just seem to invite problems and frustrations. One should save his/her problems and frustrations for trying actual photography...."Gawd all the photos on my 16gb card are terrible. Why the heck did I take any of them?"

[Richard Parkin]

With a Ricoh GRD 4* you can save the custom settings to card and restore them later. I assumed this was possible with Canikons but maybe not since nobody has come forward to recommend it.
*I'm not sure this is possible with the Ricoh GR.

[Moose]

With the E-M1 II, Olympus introduced the ability to save settings, and the three sets of custom setting, to any computer storage device.

The latest firmware update has added that ability to the E-M5 II, again including the four sets of custom settings, called MySets on that body.

A HUGE improvement over notebooks, etc.

One may not only reset the camera, then restore all one's settings, but one might have alternate sets of settings saved.