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Hasselblad CFV Digital Back CONTINUED

Thanks Gilbert!

It is like the changing seasons with this addiction - but i does not come to a stop anytime soon (and i still have a fridge full of film ;)).

Regards Andy
 
QUOTE: my CFV back can't remember time and date longer then a 100 year old human being - that does annoy me a bit since it makes it hard to sort the files in case you forgot to set before shooting. Yes - i had it running a few hours to give the internal battery a chance to charge properly. Even my el chipo p&s canon ixus is able to do that..... What was the cure for that? Do i have to send it in? :UNQUOTE

I just looked at the Settings menu on my CFV and, sometime over the last week, my CFV has also forgotten the date and time. I went back to the year 2000.

I have not noticed this before. But, then, I have not looked.

Since I received the CFV 3 months ago, it has always had a charged battery attached, except for the 2 or 3 seconds that it takes to swap a fresh battery.

Maybe we need to ask Hasselblad for a firmware fix. I am currently running 211.

Is anyone else experiencing this nuisance problem?

Regards
Peter
 
I just looked at the Settings menu on my CFV and, sometime over the last week, my CFV has also forgotten the date and time. I went back to the year 2000.

I have not noticed this before. But, then, I have not looked.

Since I received the CFV 3 months ago, it has always had a charged battery attached, except for the 2 or 3 seconds that it takes to swap a fresh battery.

Maybe we need to ask Hasselblad for a firmware fix. I am currently running 211.

Is anyone else experiencing this nuisance problem?

Regards
Peter

Yes

Steve
 
It has been reported in other forums as well.

It would appear the date and time are 'kept' using a small internal battery, and you do not need to keep a charged battery attached to the back.
When that internal battery goes flat, the problem occurs.
To change the internal battery, the thing needs to be opened up, i.e. send back to Danmark.

The problem would appear to be that the internal battery is not charged properly: either because it was not meant to, Imablad perhaps hoping it would last longer than the back itself (and it didn't), or because of a (design) fault in the circuit.
Or that the batteries that were used were rubbish.
 
I'd have to admit that I may never have set the time on my CFV. And, if you revert to the default factory settings I wonder if it also sets the time back to 2000? Most likely it does.

Actually, few of my many digital cameras can be trusted to maintain the correct date and time. Not Leica, not Canon, ( and I quess not the CFV). Strangely, the most reliable has been the H cameras ... but I use them almost every day, so I wonder if that has something to do with it?

This is a critical factor in my wedding work because I do shoot with multiple cameras, and dump all images into one folder to be sorted by time shot to place all the wedding shots in proper sequence. So, I simply added the time setting regimen when prepping to shoot. Format the cards, set the time on each camera according to the computer settings.
 
This kind of battery is not normally a rechargeable battery. Rather it is a one-time, throw-away-after-use type. Properly designed TOY clock circuits can run up to 10 years from such a battery.

So, either Hasselblad had misfortune with their battery vendor supplying them a batch of junk batteries, or they have have design problems in their electronics. Option #2 would be a sad one indeed, because this kind of circuit has in use in computers etc for decades.

The fact it is not user replaceable is just plain vanilla stupid.

Wilko

NB: TOY = Time Of Year
 
Marc,

Sad story, this. My $100 P&S Kodak digicam has no problems keeping time. Never has in fact. Your expensive (thats an understatement..) camera collection therefore should be honor-bound to be just as good in this area.

Wilko
 
I honestly can't speak difinitively on this subject Wilko. Even though it's a critical issue for me and the way I work, I haven't paid much attention to it.

I do re-set to factory defaults often since I adjust many functions based on the job at hand, or when something seems to be hanging up. So, next time I do that I'll see if it resets the internal clock. That so many of these cameras have issues with holding the time has me wondering if it isn't something simple like that.
 
I have received my REPLACED CFV back from repair at the 12th of september .
The date and time issue was one issue amongst the "missing calibration datasets" .

I set the time and date properly at that day , and the CFV has only been used once for a couple of testshots since , but always had a fully loaded battery attached .

After reading the above postings , I got my CFV BACK to check for the date and time and I HAVE TO REPORT , that the time setting stopped advancing exactly at October the 7th 07:32 hours , although a full battery was attached all time , and the display I did right now , is still done with the same battery charge .
Why the hell are all CFV BACK issues concentrated in my CFV BACK ? ? ?

I do have to say , that slowly I get very annoyed about this flipping CFV BACK .

I will give HASSELBLAD a call by tomorrow morning , and , you can be shure , it will not be as friendly as in the past .

I start to think about getting a LEAF APTUS BACK .

Regards Jürgen

My HY6 report will follow by tomorrow , as I have just returned from travelling .
 
Marc wrote

>> That so many of these cameras have issues with holding the time has me wondering if it isn't something simple like that <<

Q.G. has pointed out 3 possible reasons for this issue and they give room again for speculations .

For me , sorry to say , it does not matter anymore what's the reason for this or other problems with CFV . What I want is , finally get a CFV BACK that works as it should . And I have payed as much as all those guys , whoes CFV works as designed .

My name is Jürgen , and I am back to film .
Good to know , that there are still a lot of good films on the market .
 
Hi Marc,

It is quite possible a factory-reset also resets the TOY clock. So that would for your case explain the issue. Not, as far as I can tell, the issue the other folks report.

More data is needed to draw any meaningful conclusions it seems.

Wilko
 
CFV Lose Time

I am with Wilco: I think it is a circuit problem or a lot of bad batteries, if indeed it is controlled like most cameras, cell phones, and many other items that use a secondary battery for memory state, because others have stated that a lose of date occurred with charged battery in place. Some items like radios use volatile memory that will deplete within a minute or so without a battery.

Regards:

Gilbert
1622 UTC
 
Wilko and Marc

A reset to the defaults does not reset the DATE/TIME setting . I have just tried that out a couple of times . And that seems to be logically correct to me .

Jürgen
 
@Marc: i do have to say that in fact i never ever had a camera which was not able to keep date & time - even after setting to factory default. I have had a Nikon D1, D100 and now a D2X - no problem ever.

I do now that due to the reason the 503CW and the back are working together the EXIF data are a bit empty - but it would be nice that it is at leas populated with data which are at hand of the back. ;)

I am going to write a mail to HaBla about that.

@Jürgen: would you keep us informed about the out-coming of your telephone call? Thanks.

Regards Andy
 
Some cell phones etc do not have an auxiliary battery for the TOY clock, rather they have a so called 'supercap' that allows the main battery to be swapped / charged without loosing settings/time & date. This supercap is a high capacity capacitor (...) that stores enough energy to survive a main battery outage for a while. A while can be hours/days by the way.

For a camera or digiback I would not consider this a viable option though. What does the CFV manual say? TOY is battery powered?

Wilko
 
I did send my CFV to Hasselblad Germany some weeks ago concerning that the back is loosing date/time information after power of for some hours. Got it back with the remark 24h test without faults. Still the same issue. A technican on the phone was very supportive and explained: The internal battery for the date/time information is recharged only during switch on of the back. I used auto power off after 10 minutes! He recommended an extended recharging time by keeping the back power on for some more time.
I am now runing the back powered on for a day and will see if it helps. Maybe you could do the same and we can exchange our experience.
Best regards
Lutz
 
Wilko

"You have absolutely no idea"
wink.gif

The users manual is of such an extensive kind , that I can hardly post what it says about the DATE/TIME setting .
But I will try anyway :

"DATE & TIME

The CFV has an internal clock that keeps track of the date and time .
This information is used to mark each shot with the date and time at which it was taken .
It is also used to label batches with the date on which each batch was created ."

. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .

Sorry Wilko , that was it . Nothing more .

The words date and time appear three times , that should be enough to keep these values , even if you replace the battery , which might take 5 second at the longest .

I have reported this to HASSELBLAD , that it is not neccessary to give the user that much information , and that it could save money by not doing so .
I was told , that there will be a very short german edition very soon , but nothing has happened up to now . No wonder , they are too busy to get all the failing CFV BACKs repaired

z04_head_wall.gif


Jürgen
 
Lutz

Thanks for your info .

Why the hell can't HASSELBLAD make this kind of info available to those people , who bought a CFV ? ? ? How to do that can not be the customers problem .
biggrin.gif
 
Ah, there it is. It has to be recharged. So lack of use or quick power down appears the culprit. Probably why my H3D cameras always have the correct time since, like I said, I use them almost every day ... and I never auto-power them down while shooting.

Personally, I prefer it that way since I sure wouldn't want to send the back to Sweden for a battery swap years from now.

I reset the CFV this morning and it already is off. But I had it on for only a minute, and haven't used the camera for some time. So, I just reset the time again and am leaving the camera on until the battery dies. Then we'll see if it's all better.

Thank you Lutz.
 
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