Camera turned off and the shutter is stuck open

Well I ws doing another photoshoot for a car and when i went to take a picture the camera turned off and the shutter is stuck open. It is a Canon Rebel XT. Now it wont turn back on. I have no clue whats wrong. any help would be much appreciated.

thanks
Switched

I take it you've tried charging the battery? Or removing the battery and re-inserting it to reset the unit?

yuhp. when it happened i took the battery off and the lense and the CF card and let it sit for about 30 min. nothing.

First. did you try to charge the battery? Second, is the lens the original one it came with the camera? Third, has it ever been dropped or bumped and or have u ever had cracked filters?

Sounds like a malfunction with the internal parts. How old is this Canon Rebel XT of yours?

yeah i charged the battery and it was the O.G. lens and yes it has been dropped but i looked online for similar things and all they can do is send it to canon to repair but i dont have the money too.

Yeah sounds like your shutter failed.

You might want to take a look at this thread:

digital rebel won't turn on- help! - Canon Digital Photography Forums

just to make sure you've tried everything to get the camera to respond. If not then at this point I would have to agree with wytwolf - sounds like a shutter failure.

The shutter mechanism on that camera has a MTBF of about 50K clicks - which means it can be lower or higher, but average is 50,000 actuations (I've read on cameras that have failed at <5K clicks and some that have gone to well over 100K). If you're using it professionally, I'd imagine that you could have easily clicked up to the MTBF number if not more...

If the extra troubleshooting at POTN doesn't help, I'd say either send it to canon or time to look into upgrading to a new camera.

yeah i think the shutter failed. i have about 5k on the camera. i just wont turn on even with a new battery and i have done the whole thing of checking connetctions because i have gotten the error 99 problem once. (scared the crap out of me,)