Lens Topics 14-54 manual focus issue

[JimUSNY]

I was out trying to shoot the sunset and planet conjunctions the other night.. I need to use manual focus for night sky, when I put the camera in MF I can focus down from infinity but not back towards it.. AF works fine, as well as manual with other lenses.. Not a big problem as I just turned off camera to go past infinity then focused back a little, but got to be a pain I went too far and had to start over. I also tried AF/MF and same thing, so something in the lens appears broken.. Like I said not a big deal but is it going to get worse and affect AF is what worries me, its the 1st version I got from a closeout not too long after the swd version came out and is just past the warranty period now anyone have experience on a repair cost on this lens? could a contact dirty cause this?

[iMac]

I would call Olympus, depending how far the past the warranty period is they may honour the repair under warranty, I know of people that they have done this for, no harm in trying.

[payasam]

"could a contact dirty cause this?"

You might clean the external contacts and see if that does something.

[whaleshark]

Jim,
Sounds odd for this lens. I'm not sure I understood exactly what you did to get to inifinity in manual mode. I know the Olympus C-8080 P&S would not focus on infinity in manual focus. With hard to focus skies and such you had to work around that by autofocusing on something distinct at infinity like a distant ridge line and then switch into manual focus. It would stay focused at infinity as long as you didn't refocus. Maybe this would work for you.
I'll have to try this with my 14-54 mkI and see if it focuses on infiity correctly.
Could it be the camera body?
Good luck.

[Neddog]

Originally Posted by payasam

"could a contact dirty cause this?"

You might clean the external contacts and see if that does something.

Never hurts to try. The 14-54mm focus ring is entirely fly-by-wire, without the mechanical couplings... so theoretically a dirty contact could cause a problem.

[JimUSNY]

Originally Posted by whaleshark

Jim,
Sounds odd for this lens. I'm not sure I understood exactly what you did to get to inifinity in manual mode. I know the Olympus C-8080 P&S would not focus on infinity in manual focus. With hard to focus skies and such you had to work around that by autofocusing on something distinct at infinity like a distant ridge line and then switch into manual focus. It would stay focused at infinity as long as you didn't refocus. Maybe this would work for you.
I'll have to try this with my 14-54 mkI and see if it focuses on infiity correctly.
Could it be the camera body?
Good luck.

Its not the body, other lenses work fine.. All I did to get to infinity is shut the camera off, it resets lens a little past infinity, then I turn on again was able to back off the focus manually, but if I went too far had to start over, AF will work also but when it gets so dark there is nothing to focus on...Stars wont work.. I will try cleaning contacts on lens, may try the conjunction again tonight

[JimUSNY]

Originally Posted by Neddog

Never hurts to try. The 14-54mm focus ring is entirely fly-by-wire, without the mechanical couplings... so theoretically a dirty contact could cause a problem.

I cleaned contacts no help, its definately the lens, I changed focus direction in the menu and now it will focus back out to infinity but not closer, so must be something in the focus ring that tells the camera it is turning, only picking up in one direction and camera does what that tells it to according to setting in menu, I will contcat Olympus if they will fix it free or at least cheap I will, but if not then I can live with it and use AF