Skip to main content

2026-06-27 Canon EOS Rebel T5 Camera

I can’t stress how difficult collecting gets as you age. At one time I knew every camera I had acquired. Now I not even too sure the camera I just bought is what I think it is.
    Take this Canon EOS Rebel T5. It strongly resembles the Canon 1100D I have. Turns out that is because the T5 is the next model, being sold as a 1200D in other markets. I had mostly decided I wasn’t going to buy it. I also hadn’t identified it well in my mind, so later the same day told a knowledgeable fellow collector I had decided a Canon T5i was too expensive for my tastes (it was selling for $35). The fellow collector said that was a pretty reasonable price for that camera. And it would have been I guess, as the additional “i” in the model name indicates a more advanced camera than what was on offer.

    So late that month I was back in the thrift store selling the T5. I had thought to myself I should bring the 1100D’s battery—the T5 camera didn’t have a battery or a SD card—but then thought to myself proving the camera worked to the thrift store wouldn’t improve my bargaining position. 
    So I didn’t bring a battery…







    I found they were selling a pair of Minolta autofocus rangefinder cameras for $29.99 each. I exclaimed that seemed a trifle steep. Then I held the Canon DSLR T5 camera in my hands and mentioned to the clerk $35 for a camera that may not even work—without a battery, who could tell—seemed a trifle steep too. I said I could offer $20 and take a chance on it.     The clerk said that would be fine. I ended up paying $21 (there was GST) for the camera.  When I later discovered it seemed to broken, at least I didn’t spend $35 (36.75 with GST).
    Everything on the T5 works. All the displays, buttons, autofocusing and flash work fine. But it shoots black frames. That isn’t exactly all. I found if I grossly overexposed the frame there seemed to be a peak of colours on the left end of the histogram. If I boosted the exposure in post correction as far as I could go I could produce a highlight display of red, blue and green.









    I strongly suspect the image processor or the sensor itself either have a problem connection, or one or the other is broken.















    Yet I haven’t given up. When I got an earlier Canon EOS T something-or-another it wasn’t capturing images either. It would try to save the image and then the camera display screen would just turn into hash and the saving-to-card light would just stay on. It was sold as a not working camera with a humidity problem, but much to my surprise came to life after storage. Later I I laid the camera down on grass once for just seconds and it died again. Then, after some time left alone, it came to life again.
    So I hadn’t given up with this camera either.
I did a bit of research and found a person who had the same problem had tried leaving the camera on liveview for an hour, and her camera came back to life. I had tried liveview, shining bright lights onto the bare sensor, using the flash at a white wall a foot away…Of course I hadn’t done the liveview for an hour, but I had only limited battery life at that first attempt.
    So I looked at my two illustrative images of the problem.


As you can see one is a black frame and one is simply amplified noise.
    Sitting at my desk—as I was writing this—I set the camera to Program and used the Menu / Third yellow tab / “Clear settings” / and cleared everything. 
    Then I went upstairs to the front window.


























I used the liveview button and saw this and shot it.









Pointing the camera more into the sky I got this.










It seemed things were improving so I tried this plant against the window light.










This dried plant head was mostly highlight, again in macro range.










I swiveled up and widened to shoot across the street…This is all in real time folks!










And suddenly, we have a full colour shot! Is the camera fixed?










I swiveled around and shot the calendar on the wall (that’s my shadow from the window light).















I ran next door to the living room—took a snapshot of the coffee table— and showed my wife how well the camera had recovered. We both wondered at the joy…I call it a miracle, but my wife saves that term for people.







Shot of the far wall…
Shot of the bathroom window…
















Shot with flash in the kitchen…

















Shot out the kitchen sink window, and we are done—camera working!
   
 Alas, it wasn’t to last. Turning the working camera off for even a couple of seconds and the sensor returns to its black state.  
     
Camera                     Canon EOS REBEL T3       Canon EOS REBEL T5
(Note: No Rebel T4)       AKA 1100D                             AKA 1200D

Year introduced                     2011                                         2014
Sensor size / Megapixels APS-C / 12.2                             APS-C / 18
Autofocus Points             9—some cross type             11—all cross type
Processor                             DIGIC 4                                 DIGIC 4+
Screen size                             2.7 inch                                 3 inch
Same battery (LP-E10)     Gives 700 shots                         Gives 500 shots
Frames per second                 3                                             3.7
Both Full HD (1080P)             30 FPS                             up to 60 FPS
Construction                             All plastic                     Stainless steel chassis
Weight / size                            15 gm lighter         one dimension a little larger
Low light performance     High ISO                             better noise control
Autofocus during movies         No                                            Yes
Sensor cleaning         No—Manual cleaning only No—Manual cleaning only

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2026-03-14 - History and Evolution of the Kodak Logo

  While working as a junior clerk at the Rochester Savings Bank, George Eastman first began commercial production of dry photographic plates in a rented loft of a building in Rochester, New York in April 1880. In the next few years, Eastman became very successful and expanded the company several times. His company started as the Eastman Dry Plate Company in 1881, later became the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company in 1884, and soon after the Eastman Company in 1889. The last name change occurred in 1892, when the Eastman Kodak Company of New York was organized. The company has been called Eastman Kodak Company ever since.  The word "Kodak" was first registered as a trademark in 1888. The letter “K” had been a favorite of Eastman’s, he is quoted as saying, "I devised the name myself. The letter 'K' had been a favorite with me; it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter. It became a question of trying out a great number of combinations of letters that made word...
Post a Comment
Read more

2026-03-20-Manfrotto monopods

  Sometimes collecting is a matter of persistence.       The Manfrotto “GRUPPO” 434SSB monopod (shown top) showed up one day at my local thrift store. They had a price tag of $25 on it. I had bought the lower Manfrotto Compact MMC3-01 monopod at the same thrift store for $3. So I asked, “Why so much?” They answered their “expert” had found it sold for $200 on the internet. I find experts—who almost never clerk in the thrift store, so are unreachable—hard to deal with. There is also the matter someone might actually pay them $25 for a 2.27 kg (5 pound) aluminum pole, so I decided to let the Gods-of-Collecting decide if I was going to ever own it. For weeks I would pick it up, check the price tag to see if they had come to their senses, and return it to the shelf. I did try various clerks to see if they would lower the price, but they said they were not authorized to change prices. I plodded on, week after week without much hope.         ...
1 comment
Read more

2026-03-25 The Kiron 70-150 mm F/4

This Kiron 70-150 mm f/4 Macro1:4MC zoom was made by Kino Precision, Japan in 1980. The same company made both 1.5x and 2x extenders for this lens. It is a lovely design featuring a 52 mm filter size —common to many normal lenses—and a constant f/4 at all zoom positions. The f/stops are full stops from f/4 to f/5.6 and from f/16 to f/22 while the other apertures are half stops apart. FOCAL LENGTH RANGE:          70mm - 150mm [2.1X zoom ratio] DIAGONAL ANGLE OF VIEW: 34.3° @ 70mm - 16.4° @ 150mm   LENS CONSTRUCTION: 13 elements in 9 groups WEIGHT (Olympus OM Mount): 460 g (with hood, front and rear caps) The macro range sets in below the three foot (0.9 m) marked distance at all zoom positions but you only get to the minimum 1:4 ratio at 150 mm. Macro starts around a 1:8 macro range at 70 mm. This is the only lens I have ever collected that has the original price sticker on the rear cap. At least I assume it is the original price sticker… It ha...
Post a Comment
Read more