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Canon 6D won’t turn on

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As a public service I offer you my freak out moment today.  I’ve had my Canon 6D for a few years now and I love it.  Its taken a bit of abuse, once it even got left in a wet rain area for hours by mistake, was put next to a dehumidifier for hours and it was no worse for wear.  Just keeps on ticking.

After a day of technology glitches, like a total hard drive melt down which happened this morning. I charged up the batteries for my two battery after market grip, went to turn on my Canon 6D and…. nothing.

Totally freaked me out.  I recharged the batteries, took the grip out and replaced the batteries, put the grip back in and…nothing.  Absolutely dead.  I checked the SD card, settings, batteries again, nothing work.

Then I made the mistake of going online and reading a bunch of horror stories of people buying a Canon 6D and having it arrive DOA.  That didn’t sound good but since mine hasn’t had any problems I figured it had to be something.

Finally I took the lens off the camera and turned it on with out the lens – YES! It started up.  It was in mirror lock up mode on video, I guess after I was fooling around trying to get it to wake up but I think the problem was the lens.  Something with the contacts between the body and camera must have caused it not to wake up.

So if this happens to you – first check the batteries and make sure they are fully charged.  I’ve found that aftermarket batteries are sometimes tricky to use as the camera doesn’t necessarily recognize them totally.  They can indicate full charge one minute and be dead the next.

After the batteries try my trick of taking off the lens.  The contacts between the lens and body might be dirty.  Just take a lens cloth and give the contacts a wipe.

I notice the Canon 6D is much less expensive then when I purchased it. For just around $1400 you can get a very capable, full frame camera.

Personally I hated the “L” 24 – 105 mm lens that comes as a kit lens. I ended up selling it off after a few years of avoiding it in my lens collection. I would rather go to the 17-40mm “L” lens – the most affordable L or my 35mm prime or 85 mm prime. They are not “L” lens but they produce excellent, sharp images.