EF 24-70 f2.8 L USM lens not focusing (from 24-50)!

[romaniwasiwka]

I have an expensive Canon EF 24-70 f2.8 L USM lens that I bought new years ago. Yesterday, during an important assignment, my 5d MarkIII would not fire when lens was at 24mm. The camera would not fire from 24 to about 50mm range. After 50mm, it would fire. Many of the images from that camera proved useless because they were very soft. To be sure, I switched my 24-70 with another 5D Mark III body that had my Canon 70-200 f2.8 L USM lens and the results were the same therefore, the problem is with the 24-70 lens. In 4 days, I have more important assignments shooting a college graduation. Besides sending the lens into Canon repair, is there a FIX that I can do or is it possibly a firmware issue?

[deebatman316]

What aperture does the camera report when the lens isn't working. Also what is the full name of the lens that lens has 2 versions of it.

[p4pictures]

I have two thoughts

1. Canon may not be able to service your EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM as it is beyond service life, unless its the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM model.
2. Rent an EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM to cover the assignments this week.

As far as I am aware there were no user installable firmware updates for the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM or EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM lenses.

[romaniwasiwka]

Thank you all for your interest and replies.  I YouTubed my issue and found a photographer in England that was experiencing similar issue.  Instead of shipping the lens off for repair, he decided that he would take a crack at it by removing the lens from the body and doing a quick inspection.  He found that several screws were slightly loose and so he tightened them and gave the sensor a wipe with an alcohol pad.  I tried his method and it worked!!!!! 

[dauphinaisnoah]

Hello, I seem to have a similar issue. Would you mind sharing the tutorial you found? 

[romaniwasiwka]

Simply enter 'EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM  problems' or add 'focus issues' and you'll find it but scroll.  My solution to all this, since Canon won't repair their own lenses (despite it's age) is I will abandon them and go for Sony mirrorless gear. Problem solved.  Good luck!.

[deebatman316]

No company supports everything forever. Not even Sony supports older cameras and lenses. Especially older lenses with the Minolta A Mount which they bought out. Sony made A Mount lenses after they bought the Minolta A Mount. They don’t support a lot of their older screw drive AF lenses. They pretty much abandoned the old A Mount system.

[romaniwasiwka]

The lenses were flawless.  After owning and shooting with Nikon F3's and having 8 Nikkor lenses that were all manual focus and after switching lenses to bodies over and over and maintaining them thru the legendary Marty Forscher, it was time for me to go DSLR with auto focusing and I sold all my Nikon gear and went with EOS 5D series and 2  fast Canon lenses 24-70 and 70-200 which covered all my needs. I upgraded from 5D to 5D Mark II to 5D Mark III and kept my lens locked into the same bodies until switching to the upgrades.  Minimum use and careful of wear and tear so I was quite stunned to discover a loose screw that was the source of the problem.  As a reminder to all, clean those sensors on the lens. 

[deebatman316]

As far as DSLR to mirrorless compatibility. Canon is by far the best at supporting it. Nikon doesn’t support AF on old screw drive lenses but they do support AF on motorized lenses. Sony has sub par AF performance on motorized A Mount lenses. Screw drive AF lenses do not support AF during video aperture is set to F/3.5 or the widest open aperture. No teleconverter support or XI (Power Zoom) lens support. Even though the Sony E Mount is open a lot of the 3rd Party lenses cannot use the high burst rate. That most Sony camera bodies and lenses support. So it’s not really open like most people think it is. There are more limitations with 3rd Party E Mount lenses.

[romaniwasiwka]

EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM