johnmccarthy Loc: North Hampton NH

Todd, you are correct. The flash will not fire in AEB. I only use flash in my work as a last resort...and I mean last. Once in a while, in a finished basement with drop ceiling and recessed fluorescent fixtures, I will throw into the batch, a couple of flash exposures taken after the brackets and this helps with overall exposure and color a bit as well. I'll give the single exposures a try and see what happens. LOL , I'm trying to get through the last of the processing right now from a shoot yesterday and prepping for the shoot tomorrow.
I really appreciate you trying to see this through. When I think about how carefully I've treated this camera body, compared to how I beat up my other cameras, it just doesn't make sense. My 7DII I use for wildlife almost exclusively and that sees rain, snow and extreme cold and most times with a third party Tamron 150-600mm lens and it has never had an issue. My 600D that I use for real estate, because of all the years of bracketing, has a huge amount of shutter actuations and still works every day. I plan to upgrade this camera soon and just keep it as a back up.

Notorious T.O.D. Loc: Harrisburg, North Carolina

Well, keep us posted if you find anything more... Attached is the Warnings from my manual for AEB... Maybe something will click in our brains...

Best,
Todd Ferguson

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amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

First thing that struck me was why do you feel the need to bracket 7 images? Are you doing HDR images for real estate? That would be odd. If it's just to insure an accurate exposure, I'd say the sensible thing to do would be learn to make an accurate exposure with a single shot... or maybe a second one after adjusting, if the first is too dark or too light. Maybe a third shot would be needed in some cases, to fine tune a difficult exposure. But SEVEN? No way. Hint, use the histogram to judge exposure accuracy, don't trust the image playback because that's always influenced by the light where you're viewing it, among other things.. and shoot RAW or RAW + JPEG, in case you need to make adjustments later in post-processing, RAW is more "adjustable", if needed. I have occasionally used bracketing to insure a good exposure, but only in tricky situations and rarely more than a 3-shot sequence.

I have used multi-shot techniques with architectural interiors. One or two shots exposed for the inside, plus another for any outdoors view through the windows (it's impossible to balance the two and get them in a single image without doing extensive lighting of the interior, which is very time consuming to do right). But I don't use bracketing to do that... each exposure usually needs to be different from scene to scene, to there's no standard increment that would work all the time, unless every shot were taken the way you're doing it... with a huge bunch of bracketed images! But that fills up memory cards and hard drives 3X to 7X faster than just making correct exposures... Not to mention wearing out the camera 3X or more faster, and making for taking 3X or more time downloading images from the memory card, as well as lots of extra time sitting at the computer sorting and editing them.

Bracketing can be useful and helpful (HDR, among other things)... But it shouldn't be a crutch all the time or substitute for simply learning to make accurate exposures with a camera.

Next, because the Tamron lens on 7D Mark II is able to make a 7-shot bracketed sequence doesn't mean anything. 5D Mark III is a completely different camera... no telling if the lens and camera will "play together" properly, especially when mixing brands with a third party manufactured lens! Someone suggested using a Canon lens on the 5DIII and seeing if that was able to make a 7-shot bracketed sequence. If it does, there's nothing wrong with the camera at all. It's the lens... or more precisely, it's that particular camera and lens combination that are unable to do the 7-shot sequence for some reason. There may be no problem with either... they just aren't 100% compatible (and it's really a pretty minor thing that most photogs would never notice... that the camera won't make a 7-shot bracketed sequence with that particular lens)

Sorry you found the $3000 Canon EF 11-24mm f/4L too expensive (actually on sale for $2700 right now)... Of course you could have opted for the $2000 EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III... Or the $1000 EF 16-35mm f/4L IS... Or maybe even the $750 EF 17-40mm f/4L.... Any of which are ultrawide on a 5DIII. Or you could have gotten a $600 EF-S 10-22mm or $300 EF-S 10-18mm for use on your 7D Mark II (which has more than enough resolution for all uses of real estate images I can think of, short of billboards). Personally, to shoot real estate I'm not sure I'd want either the Tamron 15-30mm or the Canon 11-24mm, because their front elements make use of a filter problematic, and I'd often want to use a Circular Polarizer to improve color saturation and reduce reflections. Such ultrawide lenses also tend to have pretty heavy perspective distortions at their widest.

I think the solution is obvious... Stop bracketing unless you have some really good reason to be doing it! If it's accurate exposure that you're after, maybe you should invest in a good, handheld incident light meter and learn how to use it (some can also meter flash, if using that for interior shots). Used correctly, those incident meters can be a lot more precise than any camera's internal reflective metering system. They measure the light falling onto a subject, rather than what's being reflected off of it. Because of that, they aren't influenced by the tonalities the all way reflective meters are.

Alternatively, make two 3-shot or 4-shot bracketed sequences, adjusting the range that's being captured in between them. That give the same result as a 7-shot sequence (and fills things up, wears things out and makes for additional work equally well, too).

Notorious T.O.D. Loc: Harrisburg, North Carolina

One last thing I thought about that I can set on my camera is the Shutter Speed Range. I don't know if the 5D3 has this Custom Function but it might. I set my lowest Shutter Speed to 1/500 and while it still took the 7 bracketed shots when I set my base exposure Shutter Speed to 1/640 the 3 overexposed shots were all shot at 1/500 because of that limit; which the camera could not drop below. A long shot to be your issue but just something that came to mind.

Best,
Todd Ferguson

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johnmccarthy Loc: North Hampton NH

Todd,
A recap - I had a shoot Friday and the the 5DIII bracketed 7 perfectly for the interiors, but wouldn't bracket for the exterior photos. Saturday, it wouldn't work at all. Today, I used it for exteriors of a property and it bracketed 7 flawlessly each time. Go figure. I didn't change the order of the bracket shots from what I had been using.

Notorious T.O.D. Loc: Harrisburg, North Carolina

I guess it remains a mystery for the time being then...at least if worked for you today...