My Canon 7D & 17-85 lens quit working together. Error message, 01, faulty communication between them

[clarkodarko2468]

Have had the pair for about a year now, then this starts to happen. Works well shooting indoors, but stepping outdoors for a shot in good light, and not making any changes I start getting this error message and can't get any more shots. Any suggestions?

[TCampbell]

Do you have another lens to test?  

While the contacts could be dirty... usually they are not (and if they were you'd probably see the problem.)

Remove the lens, check the terminals on the lens to make sure the gold contacts are clean.  Wipe them with a soft cloth.  Do not use a pencil eraser or anything abrassive to clean them (the gold plate on the contacts is very thin and abbrassive cleaners would remove it.)  Gold doesn't corrode, so if you don't see visible dirt or gunk on the terminals, then they're probably fine.

Check the gold pins on the camera body that mate with the lens.  They are spring-loaded.  If you press on them, they should push in, but spring right back out.  Make sure you don't have one that's stuck/jammed.  it's unlikely, but check.

It can be an electrical fault inside the lens body.  If that's the case, then it's a trip to the Canon service center.

[ClarkDarko888]

Yes I have two other Canon lenses that I tried just to make sure there wasn't something wrong with the 7D body, and they both worked just fine. So I guess it's the 17-85 lens that's the problem. Thanks for your timely imput.

Clark