Friday, March 30, 2007

Bum Camera Lens

Last fall I had purchased a lens for my camera. The lens is made by Sigma and is a 24-60mm 1:2.8 EX DG D. When I first bought it, I really liked it. With support for f/2.8 through the whole zoom range, I could get away with taking pictures in fairly low light situations. About 2 months ago I noticed some of the photographs I took with the lens were slightly out of focus. I did some testing and it turned out the lens had a back-focus problem. When in auto-focus mode, it was focusing slightly behind the place it should. This led to pictures that were not sharp.

The lens is under warranty, so I sent it in for repair back in February. For the past few weeks I had been expectantly opening my mail box hoping my lens would be back from repair. Well today it did come back, and at first glance, it seemed like the focus problem was fixed. However, I had an unpleasant discovery after testing it for a few minutes. Apparantly the electronics inside the lens were replaced with the wrong part - the lens now thinks it is a 24-60mm f/3.5-f/5.6. It no longer supports f/2.8! This is a very bad thing since an f/3.5-f/5.6 lens is about 1/3 the price of an f/2.8 lens.

Now I have to send the thing back again and potentially wait another month for it to get repaired.

So if you've been wondering why I haven't been posting many photos lately, this is why. My main lens (this bum Sigma one) was in for repair and I only had my larger telephoto lens available.

Oh well, at least I get to practice being patient.