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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
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Features

How a Little Bead of Silica Gel Drove Me Absolutely Insane (And Screwed Up My Canon 5D Mk III)

Chris Gampat
No Comments
08/07/2012
3 Mins read
Silica_gel_sachet

Silica Gel: it comes in packets that we often don’t care about or toss to the side when we receive electronics, bags, or anything really. Like it or not, it helps to keep moisture out of our goods. Sometimes though, silica gel can explode in your bag and the process of getting it all out can be a bit tedious.

This is the story of how one little bead drove me insane for nearly half a day. Grab a cup of coffee.

I’m writing this on Sunday, July 29th 2012. A couple of hours ago, I was trying to go through my gear to prep for a shoot tomorrow; a portrait session for a friend where I also test out the capabilities of the Canon 5D Mk III.

After reading about how Tom Bol achieved high speed sync with his monolights and radio triggers, I decided to try something a tiny bit different as an attempt to mimic what he did but in a different way. So I hooked my Phottix Odin receivers up to my Impact LiteTrek and a Canon 580 EX II. The transmitter was placed on the 5D Mk III and then I shot a photo to see if they all worked together. They didn’t. Then I pressed the test button on the transmitter and saw that the LiteTrek and the 580 EX II went off.

Puzzled, I took a couple more photos. It still didn’t work. I took the trigger off, reattached it, went through the menus and kept trying different things. Nothing worked. I knew that the combo worked only the other day and that the Odins worked with the Canon EOS M, so why would the 5D Mk III be any different? There is no way that something could have become problematic in such a short amount of time.

I decided to try it out later and see if my 5D Mk II worked with the Odins. Everything triggered with no problems, but I couldn’t achieve high speed sync with the LiteTrek. So I said forget about that and let me focus on the problem with the 5D Mk III. Afterall, I need to do a shoot tomorrow with it.

After much trial and error and exploring different problems mixed in with browsing around online, I didn’t find a single solution. Then I decided to update my Odins to the latest firmware update. After that was all done, nothing still worked.

I stepped back from the problem, did some ironing of my laundry, cleaned the bathroom, took a long shower, edited, cut my mailbox down to size, and even shot some video around the block using a SteadiCam. It was a nice distraction.

I came back and tried to Odins again, nothing worked.

I attached the 580 EX II to the 5D Mk III, and even that didn’t fire. That was how I knew it was a problem with the 5D Mk III and not the triggers. So I cleaned the contacts the best I could, and the flash would only fire manually at full power. I couldn’t work like that for a while. Well, I could, but I wanted to work in E-TTL.

Then I remembered a problem that happened with my Canon 7D where I needed to use a bobby pin and slide it under the sides of the hot shoe to depress a pin. Because the 5D Mk III was so similar to the 7D, this had to be the problem.

I didn’t find any pin problems, but what I did find was even more disturbing: there was a little piece of silica gel blocking the end of the hot shoe and preventing my flash and triggers to slide on perfectly. Therefore it also threw off the alignment of the contacts.

Using a pair of tweezers, I was able to extract it, and I was back in business.

Despite the fact that Silica Gel can be an awesome thing for us photographers by keeping our gear safe, it is often a good idea to protect all the little nooks and crannies.

So what does this tell me? Granted that this is an extremely rare occurrence but it got me thinking that Hot Shoe development may need to take a step up. The fundamental premise and design hasn’t changed in ages, but there must be a way to better protect it from dust or anything else without having to use a Hot Shoe cover.

 

Canon 5D Mk III gel hot shoe odins phottix silica
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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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