Problem Solved; Thank You Joe Przybyla!

Problem Solved; Thank You Joe Przybyla!

Via e-mail from friend and BPN Member Joe Przybyla:

Hi Artie, Maybe you’ve already done this, but you might try cleaning the contacts on the lens and camera. It might be that the camera and lens not communicating.

Joe

As soon as I read Joe’s e-mail I was confident that he was correct. Why? The sporadic nature of the problem should have screamed “electrical contact problems.” I grabbed on old white t-shirt and the plastic bottle of Lens Clens (Industrial Optical Cleaner) that I travel with and went to work. Then I set up the tripod in the room, mounted the rig, opened the door, and noted that the AF system performed perfectly with Store by Orientation (a7 on the CUSTOM SETTING MENU set to Focus point and AF-area mode) in the exact same situation that it had failed yesterday.

The funny thing is that whenever someone came to me for the past few decades stating that they had AF problems with their Canon gear (especially when a teleconverter was involved), I would have instantly suggested “clean the contacts.” Af the problems that I was having — the AF point jumping up and down and side to side — were problems that I had never encountered when on the white side, I fell into a mind set in thinking that it was either the camera body or a setting.

Note: while I use Lens Clens to clean the glass elements of my lenses and teleconverters I use it also on the finish of the camera bodies, the viewfinder, the LCDs, and the monitor of my MacBook Pro with Retina Display. And nothing does a better job on the electrical contacts than Lens Clens.

Many thanks to Joe for restoring my sanity and getting my head on straight. 🙂

My Final Comment

Duh!