Camera was dropped. Totally black exposures. Everything seems to be intact. No rattling.

1: Make sure the exposure compensation dial (on the top left of the camera) is set to 0. You may be inadvertently moving the dial, which changes the exposure brighter or dimmer than what the camera thinks it should be. 2: If the auto exposure is set to center spot, then the camera will expose for the light at the center of the frame. So if there is a bright area in the center (a white shirt for instance) the camera will lower the exposure and the photo will be mostly dark. The opposite occurs if the center of the picture is a dark object.
3: Be sure not to block the light sensor on the front of the camera with your finger of camera strap.
4: Link to download the manual, in case you don't have it. http://support-sg.canon-asia.com/contents/SG/EN/0300419101.html

EV compensation is "Exposure Value compensation". The camera contains an exposure meter which determines how much light is on the scene and sets the exposure appropriately. However, this meter does not know WHAT you're taking a picture of, nor does it know what effect you're going for. The best it can do is to assume you're taking a picture of an "average" scene and want it to be of "average" brightness. It does this by assuming the scene is "middle gray," halfway between black and white. Most of the time this works fine, because most scenes are, well, average.
However, this is not always the case. Suppose you're taking a picture of a white dog playing in the snow. Almost everything in the scene is bright white, but the camera doesn't know that. It tries to make the scene middle gray, and the result is that you get a gray dog playing in gray snow.
On the other hand, suppose you're taking a picture of a black cat sleeping on the hood of a black car. Here everything is black, but the camera doesn't know it. It tries to make an average scene, resulting in a gray cat sleeping on a gray car.
EV compensation allows you to override the camera's exposure setting. In the first example, you'd want to add two or three stops (positive EV compensation) to force the camera to render the dog and snow as white instead of gray. In the second example, you'd want to subtract a stop or two (negative EV compensation) to render the cat black instead of gray.
How much EV compensation is correct? Well, that depends on the scene. With a digital camera, you can look at the picture and see whether the dog looks white or the cat looks black. Film photographers take lots of shot, using various levels of EV compensation, so that one of them would come out right.

That's great news, so let's write it up as a solution so that other people who search on here find the right information!

So it appears that the Canon T2i when in manual mode (M) remembers whatever settings you play with, and that these settings are remembered across power cycles; in other words, turning the camera off, or switching to auto before going back to manual does NOT put the settings back to a default.

This gives you the opportunity to set choices that make the screen view totally white or totally black, and unless you realise what you did, you can fear that your camera is broken in some way. At first, I thought this was a user interface flaw, but at least with the screen black or white, you know which way you need to go to get your picture back! The settings that affect brightness are Shutter Speed, Aperture Value, and ISO Rating. They are accessed in manual mode with the thumbwheel, alone, with Av, and after pressing the ISO button, respectively.

One more little bit of trivia: when in manual mode if you don't have live view on, when you half press the shutter, a little indicator comes up on the exposure scale, so that you can see how the settings you've chosen are going to come out.

P.S. I noticed that there was a forum especially for your camera, you might like to join it, it's called t2iforum dot com.

You have a shutter problem that can only be fixed by a service technician.

lens unit shutter section failure,take out the shutter unit replace the broken part,if not take to a camera tech

I have had both a Olympus and a Fujifilm and when i got a quote to get fixed the quote was more than the camera was worth so i claimed insurance and upgraded to the next model for under $100

The exposure compensation dial (at the back) doesn't work when you're in Manual. In Manual, you set the shutter speed and aperture to get an image with the amount of over- or under-exposure you need. In the view finder, the "exposure meter" at the bottom shows how much light there is where the lens is pointed. When it shows what you called "2-stops", its really underexposed. Thus your black images. You need to increase ISO, open the aperture and slow down the shutter speed (or a combination of these 3 options)

Set your camera to P or full-auto. Do the photos turn out ok? If they do, then there's nothing wrong with your camera and you just need practise on the Manual mode.

wack

there are two possible causes for the problem. 1). a bad CCD or 2) shutter not working. in both the cases you have to contact pro. repairer to fix the problem.

s I understand it from what I have seen on the Web, the 3000Z can operate in several modes: 1. Fully automatic (camera select both 2. Manual (user sets both aperture and shutter speed). 3. Aperture Priority mode - user sets aperture and camera chooses correct shutter speed to get a good exposure Apparently there is no Shutter Priority mode (user cannot set only the shutter er speed and allow the camera to set the aperature to get a good exposure). This option is available on the Epson 850Z camera and this seems like a silly ommision to make on a "high-end" camera like the 3000Z.