Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-19 Thread P. J. Alling 
I've never heard of that, and none of the F series lenses I  own, 
admittedly a relatively small subset works like that.



On 12/19/2017 3:38 PM, Daniel J. Matyola wrote:

I believe that, on some of the older lenses, like the "F" series, the
aperture ring had to be set in the "A" position in order for the camera to
be able to autofocus the lens.

Dan Matyola
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola

On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 3:32 PM, mike wilson 
wrote:


Why would manual aperture setting affect the ability to autofocus?


On 19 December 2017 at 13:23 "Daniel J. Matyola" 

wrote:


You guys are all snarter than me.

A while back, I had an older lens on my K-5 IIs that refused to focus.  I
struggled with it quite a while before it dawned on me that I had

neglected

to place the aperture setting on "A"

D'uh!

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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-19 Thread Larry Colen 
In any case, the camera refusing to seek focus is an intermittent 
occurrence.  It might have to do with heavy backlight, or something else.


Anthony Farr wrote:

The electrical contacts between lenses and bodies are usually kept
clean by the mounting and dismounting process. Each time you turn a
lens towards the lock position, or away from it, it wipes clean the
contacts by a very small amount. So, a seldomly mounted or changed
lens only gets cleaned seldomly and can become 'iffy' in its
connection. Sometimes I've had to hold in the lock button and work the
mount to eliminate an intermittent electrical disconnection of a lens,
which I've experienced in different mounts and their various
sub-versions: Nikon, Pentax K, FourThirds and Micro FourThirds.
They've all experienced this issue from time to time.
Some people claim you should switch off a camera whenever you change
lenses. I think that's being overly cautious, however if you're going
to 'work the mount' like I suggested it'd be a good idea. Perhaps it's
also a precaution to take with this lens in case it's getting
premature and interrupted boot-ups during mounting to a powered
camera.
regards, Anthony


On 19 December 2017 at 07:10, Larry Colen  wrote:


Anthony Farr wrote:

First you need to isolate the fault to either the lens or the camera
body. You have other camera bodies so start by determining if the
Bigma behaves or misbehaves on those.
regards, Anthony


I've had similar problems with the lens on other bodies. I don't tend to use
other lenses for birding.  Cleaning contacts seems to be a good suggestion.
This was just the time it happened and I actually thought to mention it.
Since it's sporadic, that makes diagnosis a bit more challenging.





On 18 December 2017 at 17:49, Larry Colen   wrote:

This afternoon I was photographing a heron at the Waldport seawall with
my
K-1 and sigma 50-500 during low tide.  It had flown from one spot to
another, I was walking back to the new spot, photographing as I went, and
at
one point the camera went completely out of focus, then wouldn't even
attempt to focus. I eventually got it back on track, got some more shots,
then the bird spooked, flew off (past me) I tried for some flight photos
but
the lens again went completely out of focus, then refused to do anything
to
get back into focus. With the bigma I couldn't (easily) manually focus
and I
completely lost my opportunity for those BiF photos.

Does anyone know what causes the focus mechanism to freeze up like that,
or
any way to convince it to try to refocus?

--
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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-19 Thread Mark Roberts 
Daniel J. Matyola wrote:

>I believe that, on some of the older lenses, like the "F" series, the
>aperture ring had to be set in the "A" position in order for the camera to
>be able to autofocus the lens.

Nope. F series lenses will autofocus with the aperture ring off the
'A' position.
 
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www.robertstech.com





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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-19 Thread Daniel J. Matyola 
I believe that, on some of the older lenses, like the "F" series, the
aperture ring had to be set in the "A" position in order for the camera to
be able to autofocus the lens.

Dan Matyola
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola

On Tue, Dec 19, 2017 at 3:32 PM, mike wilson 
wrote:

> Why would manual aperture setting affect the ability to autofocus?
>
> > On 19 December 2017 at 13:23 "Daniel J. Matyola" 
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > You guys are all snarter than me.
> >
> > A while back, I had an older lens on my K-5 IIs that refused to focus.  I
> > struggled with it quite a while before it dawned on me that I had
> neglected
> > to place the aperture setting on "A"
> >
> > D'uh!
>
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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-19 Thread mike wilson 
Why would manual aperture setting affect the ability to autofocus?

> On 19 December 2017 at 13:23 "Daniel J. Matyola"  wrote:
> 
> 
> You guys are all snarter than me.
> 
> A while back, I had an older lens on my K-5 IIs that refused to focus.  I
> struggled with it quite a while before it dawned on me that I had neglected
> to place the aperture setting on "A"
> 
> D'uh!

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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-19 Thread Daniel J. Matyola 
You guys are all snarter than me.

A while back, I had an older lens on my K-5 IIs that refused to focus.  I
struggled with it quite a while before it dawned on me that I had neglected
to place the aperture setting on "A"

D'uh!


Dan Matyola
http://www.pentaxphotogallery.com/danieljmatyola
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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-18 Thread Anthony Farr 
The electrical contacts between lenses and bodies are usually kept
clean by the mounting and dismounting process. Each time you turn a
lens towards the lock position, or away from it, it wipes clean the
contacts by a very small amount. So, a seldomly mounted or changed
lens only gets cleaned seldomly and can become 'iffy' in its
connection. Sometimes I've had to hold in the lock button and work the
mount to eliminate an intermittent electrical disconnection of a lens,
which I've experienced in different mounts and their various
sub-versions: Nikon, Pentax K, FourThirds and Micro FourThirds.
They've all experienced this issue from time to time.
Some people claim you should switch off a camera whenever you change
lenses. I think that's being overly cautious, however if you're going
to 'work the mount' like I suggested it'd be a good idea. Perhaps it's
also a precaution to take with this lens in case it's getting
premature and interrupted boot-ups during mounting to a powered
camera.
regards, Anthony


On 19 December 2017 at 07:10, Larry Colen  wrote:
>
>
> Anthony Farr wrote:
>>
>> First you need to isolate the fault to either the lens or the camera
>> body. You have other camera bodies so start by determining if the
>> Bigma behaves or misbehaves on those.
>> regards, Anthony
>
>
> I've had similar problems with the lens on other bodies. I don't tend to use
> other lenses for birding.  Cleaning contacts seems to be a good suggestion.
> This was just the time it happened and I actually thought to mention it.
> Since it's sporadic, that makes diagnosis a bit more challenging.
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> On 18 December 2017 at 17:49, Larry Colen  wrote:
>>>
>>> This afternoon I was photographing a heron at the Waldport seawall with
>>> my
>>> K-1 and sigma 50-500 during low tide.  It had flown from one spot to
>>> another, I was walking back to the new spot, photographing as I went, and
>>> at
>>> one point the camera went completely out of focus, then wouldn't even
>>> attempt to focus. I eventually got it back on track, got some more shots,
>>> then the bird spooked, flew off (past me) I tried for some flight photos
>>> but
>>> the lens again went completely out of focus, then refused to do anything
>>> to
>>> get back into focus. With the bigma I couldn't (easily) manually focus
>>> and I
>>> completely lost my opportunity for those BiF photos.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know what causes the focus mechanism to freeze up like that,
>>> or
>>> any way to convince it to try to refocus?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Larry Colen  l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List
>>> PDML@pdml.net
>>> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
>>> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and
>>> follow the directions.
>>
>>
>
> --
> Larry Colen  l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc
>
>
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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-18 Thread Larry Colen 



Anthony Farr wrote:

First you need to isolate the fault to either the lens or the camera
body. You have other camera bodies so start by determining if the
Bigma behaves or misbehaves on those.
regards, Anthony


I've had similar problems with the lens on other bodies. I don't tend to 
use other lenses for birding.  Cleaning contacts seems to be a good 
suggestion.  This was just the time it happened and I actually thought 
to mention it.  Since it's sporadic, that makes diagnosis a bit more 
challenging.






On 18 December 2017 at 17:49, Larry Colen  wrote:

This afternoon I was photographing a heron at the Waldport seawall with my
K-1 and sigma 50-500 during low tide.  It had flown from one spot to
another, I was walking back to the new spot, photographing as I went, and at
one point the camera went completely out of focus, then wouldn't even
attempt to focus. I eventually got it back on track, got some more shots,
then the bird spooked, flew off (past me) I tried for some flight photos but
the lens again went completely out of focus, then refused to do anything to
get back into focus. With the bigma I couldn't (easily) manually focus and I
completely lost my opportunity for those BiF photos.

Does anyone know what causes the focus mechanism to freeze up like that, or
any way to convince it to try to refocus?

--
Larry Colen  l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc


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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-18 Thread John 

On 12/18/2017 01:49, Larry Colen wrote:

This afternoon I was photographing a heron at the Waldport seawall with my K-1 
and sigma 50-500 during low tide.  It had flown from one spot to another, I was 
walking back to the new spot, photographing as I went, and at one point the 
camera went completely out of focus, then wouldn't even attempt to focus. I 
eventually got it back on track, got some more shots, then the bird spooked, 
flew off (past me) I tried for some flight photos but the lens again went 
completely out of focus, then refused to do anything to get back into focus. 
With the bigma I couldn't (easily) manually focus and I completely lost my 
opportunity for those BiF photos.

Does anyone know what causes the focus mechanism to freeze up like that, or any 
way to convince it to try to refocus?



Have you tried a different lens? At this point you don't yet know which is at 
fault.

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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-18 Thread David J Brooks 
On Mon, Dec 18, 2017 at 3:16 AM, Anthony Farr  wrote:
> First you need to isolate the fault to either the lens or the camera
> body. You have other camera bodies so start by determining if the
> Bigma behaves or misbehaves on those.
> regards, Anthony


Similar problem this past summer with my D200 and 70-200 f2.8. It
would focus then it would not. After some experiments i determined it
was the D200. I did clean the contacts.

It worked well on my D1H and D2H so it must be the D200.

Dave
>
>
> On 18 December 2017 at 17:49, Larry Colen  wrote:
>> This afternoon I was photographing a heron at the Waldport seawall with my
>> K-1 and sigma 50-500 during low tide.  It had flown from one spot to
>> another, I was walking back to the new spot, photographing as I went, and at
>> one point the camera went completely out of focus, then wouldn't even
>> attempt to focus. I eventually got it back on track, got some more shots,
>> then the bird spooked, flew off (past me) I tried for some flight photos but
>> the lens again went completely out of focus, then refused to do anything to
>> get back into focus. With the bigma I couldn't (easily) manually focus and I
>> completely lost my opportunity for those BiF photos.
>>
>> Does anyone know what causes the focus mechanism to freeze up like that, or
>> any way to convince it to try to refocus?
>>
>> --
>> Larry Colen  l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc
>>
>>
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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-18 Thread Alan C 

Larry, I'd try cleaning the contacts on the lens. "Spit & Polish".

Alan C

-Original Message- 
From: Larry Colen

Sent: 18 December, 2017 8:49 AM
To: Pentax-Discuss Mail List
Subject: refusal to even attempt to focus

This afternoon I was photographing a heron at the Waldport seawall with
my K-1 and sigma 50-500 during low tide.  It had flown from one spot to
another, I was walking back to the new spot, photographing as I went,
and at one point the camera went completely out of focus, then wouldn't
even attempt to focus. I eventually got it back on track, got some more
shots, then the bird spooked, flew off (past me) I tried for some flight
photos but the lens again went completely out of focus, then refused to
do anything to get back into focus. With the bigma I couldn't (easily)
manually focus and I completely lost my opportunity for those BiF photos.

Does anyone know what causes the focus mechanism to freeze up like that,
or any way to convince it to try to refocus?

--
Larry Colen  l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc


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Re: refusal to even attempt to focus

2017-12-18 Thread Anthony Farr 
First you need to isolate the fault to either the lens or the camera
body. You have other camera bodies so start by determining if the
Bigma behaves or misbehaves on those.
regards, Anthony


On 18 December 2017 at 17:49, Larry Colen  wrote:
> This afternoon I was photographing a heron at the Waldport seawall with my
> K-1 and sigma 50-500 during low tide.  It had flown from one spot to
> another, I was walking back to the new spot, photographing as I went, and at
> one point the camera went completely out of focus, then wouldn't even
> attempt to focus. I eventually got it back on track, got some more shots,
> then the bird spooked, flew off (past me) I tried for some flight photos but
> the lens again went completely out of focus, then refused to do anything to
> get back into focus. With the bigma I couldn't (easily) manually focus and I
> completely lost my opportunity for those BiF photos.
>
> Does anyone know what causes the focus mechanism to freeze up like that, or
> any way to convince it to try to refocus?
>
> --
> Larry Colen  l...@red4est.com (postbox on min4est) http://red4est.com/lrc
>
>
> --
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