lens issue

[xkellie]

the other day i went to use my tamron 17-50 f2.8 and found it wasn't working right. it wasn't getting enough light in (very dark) and wasn't able to focus on anything (maybe because of light issue?). my other lenses all work fine, so i know it's the lens.

any ideas on what's happened or what could have caused it? i'm the only one that uses it and it's had no hard knocks or anything that i can think would have affected it. one day it was fine, the next dark.

it's 13 months old, and apparently a grey import (bought it online, didn't even know what that was at the time). because of this the aus tamron warranty repairers won't do warranty repairs (as it wasn't purchased through one of their authorised dealers they don't honour the warranty). the site i bought it off are telling me warranty only goes for 12months and are refusing to cover it, so it looks like i'm going to have to cover the repair cost myself. if it's something major, though, i'm not sure it'd even be worth it.

[ricktas]

does it have a switch on the lens or a 'push/pull' option to turn it from auto to manual focus? My guess is that the lens has some way of turning AF off on it, and that has been done accidentally. My tamron 90mm had a push/pull action to turn it from AF to M, and it was reasonably easy to do it accidentally

[kiwi]

As rick said, or contacts could be dirty, or the lens cap is on

[I @ M]

Without knowing which brand of camera that you use I will hazard a guess that if it is a Nikon mount the aperture lock may have been disengaged and it is sitting on a small aperture no matter what value you input on the camera.

[kiwi]

Of course !!! I think Andrews on the money

[xkellie]

or the lens cap is on

sorry, should have mentioned it's a sony mount, on an a350.

also, i don't know the right wording for this, but when i move the lens to change the focal length, the lens doesn't wind back all the way back into the lens. it makes a soft tapping noise, so it's hitting something that it shouldn't be.

the focus is in the body, not the lens, but i tried to see any push/pull part anyway, but couldn't find anything. the aperture changes (at least the body says it is changing, i can't really tell if that's accurate). if i turn the iso to 3200 (highest the body goes), and use natural light and flash it will take a photo (on which the corners are dark).

thanks for all you help so far!

[xkellie]

uh-oh... i just went to move the camera and noticed there was a sound of broken glass coming from inside the lens. it might also be the ting of wire... it's hard to tell. i checked my other lenses and they have a similar sound, but the sound from the tamron lens seems to be like something is moving around (like something is loose/broken), whereas the others sound fixed.

the site i bought it off said they spoke to the aus tamron repairers, who said it's probably a mechanical problem and should be around $100 to fix... i guess that's better than the price of a new lens.

[kiwi]

yeah, well, sounds busted, and too cheap to fix. Good luck