18-55 mm lens wont auto focus

[unclegrandpa]

I have had my t6i for just over a month and i went to use the kit lens 18-55 mm, and the auto focus does not work. I have put it on another canon body and it didnt work there either. The ring on the end of the lens (non body side) just spins by hand non stop. What is the cause and what can I do or am I just out of luck on  brand new lens?

Thank You

[TTMartin]

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@unclegrandpa wrote:

I have had my t6i for just over a month and i went to use the kit lens 18-55 mm, and the auto focus does not work. I have put it on another canon body and it didnt work there either. The ring on the end of the lens (non body side) just spins by hand non stop. What is the cause and what can I do or am I just out of luck on  brand new lens?

Thank You

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If the lens is less than a year old it should be covered under warrenty. Contact Canon customer service and get it sent in for repair. 

[jrhoffman75]

If its not related to this:

then do as TTMartin says. You may be able to take it back to where you purchased it.

[ebiggs1]

"What is the cause and what can I do or am I just out of luck on  brand new lens?"

From what you said, Return it !  It is faulty.

[TCampbell]

Since this is a T6i it would have come with the "STM" version of the 18-55mm lens.  That is a "focus by wire" lens... there is no mechanical linkage between the focus ring and the movement of the focusing elements within the lens.

But since it is an electronic focusing lens, it will ONLY be able to focus when the focusing system is active.

Make sure the camera is switched on.

Press the shutter button half-way to activate the focusing power and metering system.  You should be able to manually focus the lens as long as the focusing system remains active.  After several seconds, the camera will put the focus and metering systems back to sleep and that means rotating the focusing ring wont have any effect.

If this is the behavior you are experiencing, then your lens is working normally (not a defect.)

The STM lens has a few advantages over the non-STM lens it replaced.  The new lens is MUCH quieter (when recording video the focus motors are so quiet that the internal microphone probably cannot detect any sound from the focus motor -- which would have been quite noisy with the previous lens).  It's also faster and smoother to focus.  And also the front of the old lens used to rotate as it focused -- but the STM lens does not rotate.  This is important when you use a circular polarizing filter on the lens because with the old lens, every time you focus, you'd have to reach forward and rotate the polarizer.

Another advantage of the STM version is that it offers "full time manual override" meaning that even if the lens is in auto-focus mode, you can always rotate the focus ring to take-over focus (as long as the focus system is active.)  With the previous version of the lens, you had to disengage the auto-focus mechanism because attempting to manually focus the lens when auto-focus was active could potentially damage the lens.  It's not possible to damage the STM lens by trying to focus when the camera is also trying to focus.

There are lots of advantages to the STM version of the 18-55mm lens... but the only caveat is that the focus-by-wire system means that you have to remember to wake-up the focusing system before rotating the manual focus ring.