eric_bradley

<p>I still have this lens and dig it out for occasional use (once a year or so). I can't quite bring myself to get rid of it as it still functions well and is compact compared to the other lenses I use most often in this range (70-200 F4L IS & 100-400L). I second the observations made here - it a good optical performer but makes a very mechanical buzz when using AF (definitely not ultrasonic!). Probably not the first choice of lens these days but good value at the right price.</p>

<p>Well, that does sound familiar. I set the CFn to stop the lens going too out of focus but it appears that I may have stopped it going into focus, which is not quite what I intended! I didn't think it was a close focus/far focus issue but after this discussion, I don't really see what else it can be. As I said, I have now set this to ON but I won't be doing any photography until the weekend so it will be a few more days before I can say that this is definitely the solution. Thanks again for your help.</p>

<p>Thanks for your replies. I'm pretty sure it's not the lens as a) several of them exhibit the same problem and b) they have all performed without issue on my 20D and 40D (and beloved EOS 3 before that). Lenses that I know have exhibited the problem are 24-105, 135 F2, 100-400 and 400DO. As for setting III-4, I have that set to 1 - Focus Search Off. Now that I refer to the manual, I wonder if I should try setting that to 0? I didn't think it would be that as it doesn't even try to focus and I assumed that this setting would stop the lens hunting after having tried once. Also, when AF does kick in (after a manual twist of the AF ring), it usually does find focus straight away. I suppose, however, that I might actually be putting it more in focus at this point. Anyway, I will set this CF to 0 and see if I still get the problem.</p>

<p >I’ve had a 7d now for over two months and whilst I am generally very happy with it, and have had excellent results with the auto-focus on such things as birds in flight, I have a specific problem which I haven’t seen reported anywhere. Basically, sometimes the camera will refuse to focus. I don’t mean that it will try to focus, hunt and fail, it just will not make the slightest attempt to focus. As far as I have been able to tell this typically seems to happen after the camera has automatically powered off due to inactivity and I am activating focus with the shutter release. This is very frustrating and I have missed quite a few wildlife shots because of this. A manual twist of the focusing ring seems to kick the auto-focus back into life, after which it is absolutely fine. However, sometimes I’ve got the hood reverse mounted on the lens (over the focusing ring) and then I really do miss the shot as I have to remove the hood before I can activate manual focus.</p>

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<p >I am not talking here about the custom functions that change the way that auto-focus works, many of which I have set for action photography when I am in Servo-AF; this is about the fact that it doesn’t even attempt to auto-focus. I have had the same problem on several lenses, all Canon Ls. I’ve checked the contacts are clean, the auto-focus switch is set to on, there is no focus limiter set, the subject is greater than the minimum focusing distance for the lens and I am not shooting with converters to go above f5.6. I am typically shooting on these occasions in 1-shot AF. I was shooting with spot auto-focus and thought that maybe there was sometimes not enough contrast in a small area but I have had the same problem in other focus modes. Unfortunately, I have not been able to reproduce this effect at will: it only seems to happen when I don’t want it to, but it does happen at least once or twice a day when I am using the camera.</p>

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<p >It doesn’t seem to me like an auto-focus issue per se, more that the camera is not fully activating after being shut off (thought the display settings are all fine). I was expecting to see a firmware release by now that addressed this but now I am starting to think it must just be me (or my camera, of course!). I am on 1.1.0 btw.</p>

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<p >Has anyone else seen behaviour like this? Does anyone have any other suggestions I can try?</p>

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<p >Thanks</p>

My ship (Akademik Ioffe) used U.S. 2 pin sockets but had a UK adaptor plugged into one socket. I imagine the other Russian ships would be similar but I was able to check the spec of the ship online before I travelled and I suggest you do too. I always seemed to have something charging at any one point in time, be it batteries or backup devices etc. You are going to take a lot of photos, possibly more than you have ever taken before, so go prepared.

 

Meanwhile, here is a pic of some curious penguins<div></div>

Mark, you are absolutely correct. I seem to recall that 5 meters is the recommended maximum distance and that you should never cause a change in animal behaviour. Any reputable tour guides will make sure that everyone observes this rule absolutely strictly. Of course, no one tells the penguins this and I should really have said "penguins can get very close to you". If you just sit quietly, they will walk up to or around you, either ignoring you or finding you slightly curious. I found gentoos to be the most inquisitive and they seemed to enjoy a good nibble of binocular and camera straps etc. I only meant to say that you don't need a great white lens to get a close up penguin shot. Most of my close-ups were with 70-200, occasionally with a 1.4x

Meant to add that I also had a close-up filter but found little or no use for macro.

I was there at this time last year ? it?s an amazing place and you will get great shots whatever gear you take. However, regardless of whether or not wind chill will affect your camera, it will certainly affect you. It was mostly absolutely freezing the whole 3 weeks I was there so take plenty of warm clothes and make sure you have spare batteries. I took a 20D with a 10-22, 24-105, 70-200 F4, a 400 DO and a 1.4x. The majority of landscape shots were shot with 24-105 and the majority of wildlife with 70-200 (you can get very close to penguins). Because you are on a boat for a large amount of time, it?s hard to get much foreground interest with very wide angle and I took very few shots with the 10-22. Having said that, the ones I did take made it worth while and you won?t want to be without it when you get up close to blue icebergs etc. You also get a lot of ice on the shoreline and I had a lot of fun with up-close wide-angle weird ice formations.

 

I almost always shoot handheld but decided to take a monopod for the big lens. On the boat, the weather was normally between a force 8 and 10 gale so it was pretty useless and I gave up. On the couple of days we did get mirror smooth water, I found the monopod to be a highly effective way of transferring the vibrations of the ship engines to the camera so again gave up. I didn?t even bother with it on shore as there is only so much you can take on a zodiac and I was already encumbered by a large camera bag and a life jacket. There was mostly a very large swell at all times and getting in and out of the boat was not always easy, especially with a rucksack weighing 10k+. You will also be shooting from the zodiac a lot of the time where handheld is the only option. If I went again, which I very much hope to do one day, I wouldn?t bother with a tripod or monopod. If you feel you really need the support for a big lens, I would go down the monopod harness route.

 

I took an InfraRed filter but I never used it as on a 20D, it needs long slow exposures and this wasn?t possible with the ship?s motion. On land, I never found a view that I felt needed it and to be honest, I forgot all about it after a while. I didn?t take a waterproof bag but just wrapped my bag in a plastic bin liner when I was on a zodiac. I had a separate plastic bag for the camera but I would seriously recommend getting some sort of additional water protection. My 20D seized up on a zodiac cruise in particularly miserable conditions one afternoon. When back on the boat, I tried swapping the battery but heard a fizzing noise coming from the camera. Not good. I realised that I had water in the battery compartment (enough to see, and rather scary) and was somewhat distraught as I was only half way through the trip with only a measly Powershot S80 as backup. I dried the camera off and left the compartment open overnight and was mightily relieved when it started working again in the morning. Just about everyone on board suffered camera malfunction at some point or other and most were OK after they dried out a day or two later. So, you definitely need to take some sort of water protection and you definitely need a backup camera. You will get wet on a zodiac. At one point, in rough seas and at the front of the boat, it was like having a freezing cold bucket of very salty water tipped right over my head continuously for about 45 minutes. I was miserable and freezing, but the camera survived that one! Anyway, what?s the point in taking a camera if you don?t use it? It?s an amazing place and the weather brought home to me what a wild and unforgiving place this really is. Read Shackleton?s ?South? before you go, then you?ll know what hardship is! Have fun.

This is exactly the same problem I had: looks like a software glitch to me. I posted it here: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00MgpH

I bought one a couple of weeks ago and have generally been very happy with it. However, I did get quite a few "Error 99 unable to take photographs" messages that were temporarily fixed by turning the camera off and (I hope) permanently fixed by removing the battery. At least, it hasn't recurred in almost a week. What happened is that I put a compact flash in the camera, formatted it and took a picture - no problem. It was a large JPEG called something like IMG_1303. Next day, I took a shot and it created IMG_1301 then IMG_1302. Basically, that's when the errors started and the camera seemed to have "lost track" of what was on the newly-formatted card and was erroring because of this. Seems like a definite firmmware issue to me but Canon don't seem to have posted any new versions as yet. I am on 1.0.3. BTW, numbering is in continuous mode.