The legend has come to life again...

It was Tuesday, October 27, 2020. I took out my "fiveD" (Canon EOS 5D mark I) from my backpack with the intention to take some macro photos. I charged the batteries and then put them in the camera, but it looked like there were no batteries in it. I took a multimeter out of the drawer to make sure they were really charged.

The voltmeter showed a voltage that indicated a fully charged battery. I removed the batterygrip from the camera, hoping that it was the problem, only still nothing happened. I let the EOS sit overnight with almost little hope of recovery.

After a 24 hour rest, the Canon still showed no signs of life, so I began to resign myself to the fact that my photo equipment had once again dwindled. All through the early evening I pondered the possible causes of the camera's demise. Around midnight I decided there was nothing to lose and carefully disassembled the camera to look inside to see if the base plate showed any signs of damage. I picked up the multimeter again and carefully began to examine the various components on the base plate, excluding the microchips

    Four o'clock in the morning passed in the distance and the multimeter told me that two fuses near the trigger were defective. I heated up the solder and carefully soldered weak copper wires to both sides of the SMD fuses. Soldering a 0.8x0.4 mm component is a real chore, but it worked out in the end. I connected the ends of the newly energized wires together, bridging the faulty fuse. I carefully plugged the flex cables into the sockets and connected the parts. I realised that if there was now some electrical problem, such as a short circuit, the fuse would have taken care of it before, but it was now bridged by the wire, so the whole baseplate would have taken it straight away.

So I put on gloves to eliminate as much damage to any part of the camera as possible and inserted the battery. Suddenly, the blue light flashed, indicating the life of the 5-D. I almost screamed with joy, waking the sleeping house. Now the problem had been found, but the second challenge was to find a new fuse. The internet was full of offers from abroad and I didn't want to wait a month or two for a courier to deliver a package from the opposite continent. Eventually, I came across fuses with similar specifications to the original camera. I immediately ordered five of them, better to stock up, after all you never know what can happen.

 There was a slight delay in delivery, but today, Wednesday 4 November, the post office delivered my envelope with the insurance policies. I couldn't wait for my online class to be over so I could continue to repair my Canon. I carefully soldered the new fuses onto the already-laid wires and capped all the joints with the non-conductive polyurethane paste I use when repairing and fixing parts. I took a screwdriver and started assembling the camera body. Fortunately, while disassembling the camera, I was enlightened by the idea of taping the individual screws to double-sided tape with a label indicating what goes where, so this made the assembly process easier and faster.

When everything was in place, after the whole repair, I reinserted the battery into the camera for the first time to make sure everything was successful. I started testing, the shutter was clicking, the buttons were doing their job, the top display was lit and showing a changing value and the display showing the photos, it refused to cooperate. So I had to take the camera apart again and clean the contacts. After the second reassembly, the screen was already lit, but only showed 8 colors. This was followed by the process of opening the camera again. Slowly, I was beginning to feel that I knew exactly which screw needed to be turned 360 degrees and which required more turns before it would loosen. I detached the back and and removed the display. I fiddled a bit with the flex cable leading to the LCD panel and screwed the camera together for the final time.

   Now everything worked as before. From the glitch, I concluded that the error was either caused by the intermediate rings of poor quality, which I used in the previous photo shoot, or by putting the camera with the macro lens in the photo bag. Subsequent carrying may have depressed the shutter release, thus triggering the focusing process, the lens started to extend, and since the macro lens is my only lens still with the old focusing technology using a standard motor, not the new STM/USM, the lens stopped (jammed) against the backpack wall during focusing, and in good faith to find a suitable focus point the motor started to draw more current, thus blowing a fuse in the circuit.