PHIDONG.COM . 5.0

This isn't news to people who own a 20D and grip or have ever considered owning the grip and done research. Canon's fitment of the battery grip isn't perfect. In fact, it's loose. Very loose. It wobbles around and if flexed the camera will shut off. IF flexed, meaning you'd have to apply quite a bit of pressure on the battery grip where the battery usually is.

Don't believe it? Grab your 20D, turn it on and give the battery grip a tug. While my camera has never shut off while shooting it wasn't a matter of if it would happen but when .

An ounce of prevention is a pound of cure !

To fix the looseness, I cut a flyer and used gaffer's tape to tape it on. The gaffer's tape (if you don't know) is a cloth tape like duct tape except it doesn't leave adhesive residue (for the most part) when removed. Gaffer's work in the movie industry handling lighting and mounting of cameras in different places, so they have to use a tape thats strong, but clean on removal. For those reasons alone, this is the perfect tape for the job. The flyer and tape add thickness to where the grip used to slide into the battery slot, which helps stiffen the combination and makes the camera feel like a more rigid body on a whole.

Now for the powering off problem. A big deal? Not anymore. I cut two small, very small, strips of gaffer's tape and put it into the slot where the microswitch is. The problem with the grip is that when it flexes, the part of the grip which pushes this switch down comes up slightly enough to turn the camera off. The two pieces of tape kept the camera on even when I tugged hard (I didn't want to break my new camera, so I didn't pull TOO hard, but I pulled hard enough....)

UPDATE : Canon has apparently addressed this problem on their newer batch of battery grips. I actually ended up bringing my camera into Canon. If you have one from an older batch they will do this fix for free. They extend the battery contacts and put a spacer at the bottom to hit the microswitch so the grip doesn't cause a power out. THE GRIP FITMENT STILL SUCKS . It still wiggles, so you might still need to do the "business card" trick.

Heres a picture of the extended battery contacts.