Sony A1 shutter fault - solved by Wex

pooley

pooley

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Mike
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I've got an A1 that has always worked fine. I need the mechanical shutter to fire my strobes when underwater with the camera in its housing (unless someone can tell meow to get a hot shoe firing with electronic shutter)

I was away last weekend and had left the camera in mechanical shutter mode, but after every shot it locked up and said I needed to turn the camera off and on again, but the only way to reset it was to take the battery out and replace it, whereby I got one more shot then repeat.

It worked fine on electric shutter so I got round it that way, but that's not an option for my normal underwater stuff.

I'm currently doing all firmware updates and will then clean the contacts on the lens but this is more in hope than anything else

Any ideas please?
 
Sounds like your shutter is about to fail. Firmware updates won't help and if it's not doing it when using the electronic shutter is used cleaning contacts on the lens won't help.

If you have Sony pro support get in touch with them and they can arrange for you to send it in for repair while arranging a loaner body for you. If you don't have pro support and it's still under warranty just contact Sony and arrange a repair but they won't provide a loan body.

If it's out of warranty you can arrange a chargeable repair through fixation.

If it's a grey market body with Panamoz you just let them know and you can arrange a repair and once you have the quote they will send you payment for the full repair cost. E-infin will do similar if you are still under their warranty although have heard some horror stories about getting money out of them for warranty repairs, but haven't experienced it myself.
 
f/2.8 said:
Sounds like your shutter is about to fail. Firmware updates won't help and if it's not doing it when using the electronic shutter is used cleaning contacts on the lens won't help.

If you have Sony pro support get in touch with them and they can arrange for you to send it in for repair while arranging a loaner body for you. If you don't have pro support and it's still under warranty just contact Sony and arrange a repair but they won't provide a loan body.

If it's out of warranty you can arrange a chargeable repair through fixation.

If it's a grey market body with Panamoz you just let them know and you can arrange a repair and once you have the quote they will send you payment for the full repair cost. E-infin will do similar if you are still under their warranty although have heard some horror stories about getting money out of them for warranty repairs, but haven't experienced it myself.
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Cheers Tommy,

Strangely enough doing this seems to have worked.

However, it did do a short period of working last weekend before reverting back the next day so I'm not breaking out the champagne just yet.

All a bit weird.....

MIke
 
I would also try a factory reset... I have found that there may be an odd arrangement of settings that can cause similar behavior (Nikon); but I never figured out exactly what the combination was.

It doesn't sound to me like the shutter is actually hanging mechanically; otherwise it wouldn't be able to complete taking an image.
 
pooley said:
I was away last weekend and had left the camera in mechanical shutter mode, but after every shot it locked up and said I needed to turn the camera off and on again, but the only way to reset it was to take the battery out and replace it, whereby I got one more shot then repeat.

Any ideas please?
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I had very similar symptoms with my A7II when the shutter failed at around four years old

A battery-out reset got it back for one shot just a couple of times, but then it failed completely and wouldn’t move at all even with that

Afraid I wrote it off and bought an A7III
 
Musicman said:
I had very similar symptoms with my A7II when the shutter failed at around four years old

A battery-out reset got it back for one shot just a couple of times, but then it failed completely and wouldn’t move at all even with that

Afraid I wrote it off and bought an A7III
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Wow, that's quick for shutter failure on a pro level body... how many mechanical actuations would that be?
 
sk66 said:
Wow, that's quick for shutter failure on a pro level body... how many mechanical actuations would that be?
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Even back in the day we knew most shutter failures come really early on, or very late on in life. It's not an excuse though
Most users will gravitate more and more to full electronic mode and it can't come soon enough until all cameras are free from mechanical shutter
 
sk66 said:
Wow, that's quick for shutter failure on a pro level body... how many mechanical actuations would that be?
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Looking at the last shots I got from it with an online tool, it achieved a little over 27K mechanical shutter actuations when it died.

I bought it second hand from Wex with 546 actuations on the clock.

Edit: the A7 that i bought new in 2013 has about done 25K shots and still works fine (it’s been pressed into service as a webcam these days but I keep it as a backup body if I need it)
 
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Musicman said:
Looking at the last shots I got from it with an online tool, it achieved a little over 27K mechanical shutter actuations when it died.

I bought it second hand from Wex with 546 actuations on the clock.

Edit: the A7 that i bought new in 2013 has about done 25K shots and still works fine (it’s been pressed into service as a webcam these days but I keep it as a backup body if I need it)
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Unfortunately shutter can fail at anytime.

WEX offer a 12 month guarantee on used gear or they did anyway can you not just contact them or have you had it more than a year?
 
LongLensPhotography said:
Even back in the day we knew most shutter failures come really early on, or very late on in life. It's not an excuse though
Most users will gravitate more and more to full electronic mode and it can't come soon enough until all cameras are free from mechanical shutter
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Roll on (no pun intended) the Global Shutter !

PS IIRC it was Sony that were leading in anticipated release of this newest cutting edge shutter.
 
Box Brownie said:
Roll on (no pun intended) the Global Shutter !

PS IIRC it was Sony that were leading in anticipated release of this newest cutting edge shutter.
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Sony a9iii
 
f/2.8 said:
Unfortunately shutter can fail at anytime.

WEX offer a 12 month guarantee on used gear or they did anyway can you not just contact them or have you had it more than a year?
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I had owned it for over four years: bought March 2018, died June 2022

I’d been thinking about an upgrade anyhow, and I got a good deal on a new A7III, so it wasn’t the end of the world
 
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Sounds like it might be affected by exposure to salt water Mike .,in which case it’s an insurance problem . ,!!! ?
 
Took the camera into Wex Manchester today expecting the worst. Even been googling second hand prices for a new camera.

Got talking to a staff member called Jack who said the camera is notorious for not liking older memory cards, and we tried a newer faster card - and its working again!

More than happy to only have to buy a new card - great service
 
The card in at the time was an old Sandisk Extreme 90mb/s

It sounds really strange, but I bought a new Sony card today, and have now tried with a Delkin card given to me several years ago by a friend and they're both working

Its outside my technical knowledge to explain but in all honesty all I care about is I have a working camera again!
 
pooley said:
The card in at the time was an old Sandisk Extreme 90mb/s

It sounds really strange, but I bought a new Sony card today, and have now tried with a Delkin card given to me several years ago by a friend and they're both working

Its outside my technical knowledge to explain but in all honesty all I care about is I have a working camera again!
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It’s not that that card was old it’s because it’s slow. Those old Sandisk cards are only V30.
 
sk66 said:
But the card worked before?...
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Agreed and if there was a problem with the write speed you'd think the faster electronic shutter (in that it offers higher burst rates) would be less likely to work than the slower mechnical shutter. I've used slow cards with a number of cameras and they behaved as you'd expect in that they'd be slow to clear the buffer and would drop frames in video modes that were too fast for the card but I've not seen them cause the camera to take photos. I have had similar symptoms with a faulty card or one that was needing formatted where the camera would attempt to take the photo but error and I'd have to restart the camera however the camera reported it as a card error plus I wouldn't expect the camera to work in with its electronic shutter (none of them had such a mode).

Hopefully it is a memory card issue in the OP's case since that's easy to sort but it seems odd.
 
sk66 said:
But the card worked before?...
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I have 2 128gb cards that I rotate. A Sony and a Delkin. Never been an issue. Took the camera out the other week after a period of inactivity and was only shooting a few frames so I just grabbed the old Sandisk not expecting any problems, and this was the result.

Something I wasn't aware of before, the card had worked ok in my previous cameras but as most of my work is underwater these days and I obviously can't change cards mid dive I just always put the higher capacity cards in and never gave it a second thought
 
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