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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Unglued mirror on Canon 5D
Harrison Shull, Photographer
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Fayetteville, WV | Asheville, NC | | Posted: 8:38 PM on 11.03.08 |
->> I have a very old and until today very reliable Canon 5D. It has lived a hard life and captured too many frames to estimate (no way to tell on a 5D)
Today in the middle of a shoot, I had the mirror come unglued from its little black plastic tray that flips up when a frame is captured. The mirror and tray are intact and the camera fires just fine with the mirror out of the camera. There are what appears to be four little adhesive discs that held the mirror to the tray.
This camera is old, well used and not really worth sending to CPS for hundreds of dollars of work IMHO. I am planning on either getting another 5D or maybe upgrading to the 5DmII soon anyway. It seems to me that this would be an easy shadetree fix by simply gluing the mirror back to the tray.
So my question is this... has anyone ever tried this and what kind of adhesive is going to work best. The tray is a plastic material and the mirror is hard to tell if it is glass or some sort of optical plastic.
I know that I am potentially playing with fire here, but I am already resigned to the new body and this seems like a good way to get a "beater" 5D that I can use in high-risk remote applications without worrying about losing it. |
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Yamil Sued, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Peoria | AZ | USA | Posted: 8:45 PM on 11.03.08 |
| ->> You will be surprised how inexpensive it's going to be sending it back to CPS for a proper repair!! They treat members very well there and if your body doesn't look like you have been dragging it behind your truck for the past three years, they will not charge you that much. they DO look at the way the equipment looks like when they do estimates. I have sent all my gear to the CA Canon office and they do great service there, but I know the NJ office is very good too!! Send it in for an estimate, it's going to be less than you think and given that you are not the FIRST person to have this happen to their 5D, who knows!!!! This is a well known problem with 5D's, or at least I have heard that same thing happen to several other shooters. |
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Harrison Shull, Photographer
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Fayetteville, WV | Asheville, NC | | Posted: 8:56 PM on 11.03.08 |
->> Whoa.... amazing what Google can dig up online. Looks like this is a well known 5D problem. Here is just part of what I found.
"A couple of weeks ago, the reflex mirror in my Canon 5D became 'unstuck' from the mechanism that lifts it up during exposure. Fortunately, the mirror didn't fall out and break. I took my camera to the Canon service center here in Busan, Korea, to have them repair the problem. Their only option for repair was to replace the entire mirror box mechanism for approximately US$500.
Given that I would need to pay $500 to replace the entire mechanism anyway, I figured nothing would be lost by trying to repair the problem myself. So, I bought some cyanoacrylate ("SuperGlue"), put a few small drops on the mounting points for the mirror, carefully put the mirror back in place, and waited a few hours for it to dry. The result: the camera is back to functioning as well as it was before the problem. Focusing accuracy doesn't appear to have suffered. Cost of repair: less than $3, and about ten minutes of effort."
http://photo.net/wedding-photography-forum/00NxQL
http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/622376/1
http://www.lightstalkers.org/5d-mirror-detaches-help-01
Methinks I will avoid the CPS circus and simply glue it back as many of these posters did in the above threads. $500 goes a long way towards a 5DmII or an even cheaper 5D. |
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Max Gersh, Photographer, Student/Intern
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St. Louis | MO | USA | Posted: 9:09 PM on 11.03.08 |
| ->> I'd be careful using glue. Some glues can fog optical elements. You could inadvertently damage your focus screen or sensor. Is it free to send in for an estimate? If so, then you might as well check. Repair costs in Korea and in the US probably differ. |
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Harrison Shull, Photographer
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Fayetteville, WV | Asheville, NC | | Posted: 9:17 PM on 11.03.08 |
->> Again, this is an old and very well used body that has been to hell and back. If the camera bites the dust... then so be it!
CPS has overcharged me on every repair they have ever done - even repairing things that I did not ask to be done.
The mirror is a long way from the sensor and protected by the shutter so fogging anything is the least of my worry. I just want an adhesive that will keep the mirror on the tray.
From the threads I pasted in above, it seems that superglue works pretty well. |
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Patrick Fallon, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Columbia | MO | USA | Posted: 9:53 PM on 11.03.08 |
->> Harrison,
Look at the 3rd party repair places.. i.e. MidState Camera Repair in RI. They might be able ot fix it, glue it, or w/e for less and do it correctly. Don't write off the whole camera - I am sure that if it functioned Fine you could still get over $500 for it.
P |
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