Getting Away From Sony Alphas Entirely

[Greg Beetham]

It's probably the only reason against having everything controlled on, and by, the body, and that is legacy lens compatibility, especially third party ones. It's very convenient having the f-stop controlled and set on the body instead of on the lens, and for AF and SSS to work properly the body has to know the exact lens ID, ditto for ADI, it also makes life very difficult for third party lensmakers...one could say on purpose..perhaps. Really, ideally if the camera doesn't get a verifiable lens ID response then it should automatically just switch those systems that are affected 'off' and revert basically to 'M' mode, not chuck a fit and shut down alltogether..
Greg

[Javelin]

I read where if the cameras don't get a lens ID then default to 50mm and no aperture information. I think the problem is when a lens hijacks an incompatable lens ID. I also think that some of those pins provide power to the lens it's possible to burn out a rom and short the camera. I can't see where a lens could make the camera inoperable as those power circutes should be protected but the roms are so simple theres nothing on them except the one chip.

[Greg Beetham]

In the AF system there is also the lens focus position encoder connected by the contact pins, (besides the ROM ID info), the camera has each lens in it's database, so it all works quite ok as long as the everything is genuine OEM, and/or the third party lensmaker has bought the licence and a ROM chip from the manufacturer for their lenses (so I heard), that would raise the price considerably probably, and possibly make it not economical to pursue, thus some older third party lenses have hybrid ROM's, incorrect ROM's, some of which might even end up damaging the camera, and who knows what changes have been made by Sony in the later model cameras that have LV, some of those non compatible lenses could damage those in other areas as well.
Greg

[stevecim]

I sometimes switch lenses without switching my camera off. Nothing bad has happened, but I wonder about what might go wrong when wiping all the contacts across each other when they're live, as might be happening when you twist then lens into place. I believe at least some 3rd party lens makers have had to reverse engineer the details of the A mount interface. I wonder if some of them haven't quite got all of Sony's security precautions in the design correctly implemented?

I'll need to double check the schematics, but I think, pressing the lens release button cuts power to the lens.
If it doesn't then it should

[chmodx]

Lenses:

Minolta 18-70mm 3.5-5.6
Minolta 50mm 1.7
Sigma 70-200mm 2.8 HSM II
Tamron 28-75mm 2.8

I baby my equipment, never bang it, never twist it, always held on a strap, in a case, etc..

The thing is, the camera will autofocus with the lens, and when I try to snap the shot, that's when the error comes up, so it's actually activating the lens motors.

[Greg Beetham]

Well I can't see anything in that lens list that should cause any problems.....but one of them is.
Greg

[David Kilpatrick]

I would suspect the Sigma HSM lens although I own one myself. It's the only lens there which takes power from the camera body, and could perhaps cause the problem by overloading the battery. I have a bunch of infolithium cells, but I notice they do behave differently in terms of how they how charge, discharge etc according to their history.

I remember that some problems like this with the Dynax 7D were discovered to be due to worn-out lith-ion cells. Camera locking up and refusing to shoot, producing error messages. It started to appear a year after the camera launch, for those who took a lot of shots and used the battery cycles heavily. Replacing the battery with a new one (or with a freshly charged one) eliminated the problem.

When I use the Sigma HSM I always load a fresh fully charged battery.

David

[motor]

David I agree with you. I do alot of tinker'n with electricity. I am in a battle bot robot competition and batteries are a the most important part. To me is sounds liker a battery issue not a lens issue. If the lens is causing the contact to depress or scrape you would see it. They are also spring loaded "I imagine" like the contacts on a keyboard or pad for example. A good cleaning and they should spring back. If the shutter is pulling a quick amount of juice and the cells are bad it could just cause the camera to lock up like a fuse breaker kicking causing an error. Therefore it would do it everytime! Aurofocus pulls very little "I imagine". By chance are you using the same batteries you used in the 200? Where are you keeping your batteries? If a battery freezes or is kept in a moist area or is continually not drained all the way and recharged or is charged to fast ( charger issue) it could be effected even if everything else is being taken care of cleaned perfectly. Check the batteries, check your charger and make sure the charger is the correct HZ, amps etc being supplied. You could be frying a new battery instantly and not know it. Batteries are a funny thing....... current draw is even more funny. If the HSM is pulling more then the load would be more which puts more draw on the battery.

Just a thought

Motor

[Greg Beetham]

Well it's plausible, but if one of the lenses is drawing too much from the battery it should be getting quite hot, almost too hot to handle, (the heat increases the resistance, and further restricts the flow), so it might pay to check which lens, after focussing with it for a while, makes the battery unusually hot. There should be some kind of warning if the camera detects high current draw, but it looks like there isn't, just the level indicator only.
Greg

[Javelin]

Lithiums do not respond well to large cyclic draws of current but anything like that from the camera is probably got a capacitor . it could be a lot of things I imagine the power circuits are protected from current and short circuit (maybe not) but there could be a feedback loop or EFI from the lens . the lens roms 3I've seen have no Shields or filters on them. not even a diode to prevent crossed poles. it could expose the electronics in the camera to noise which does not get along well with logic. Ultra sonic motors are noise! and encoders can also feedback as well (Linear encoders sometimes produce static as well). remember all you need is a tiny bit of oxidization somewhere to create a radio receiver that could respond to energy from that motor and lock up the camera. This would usually be intermittent though. and is a pain to find in a system if it exists.

[stevecim]

chmodx, have you done the standard things, like clean the contacts on the lenses?

Sounds like, the error happens when the camera tries to set the aperture, pins 5 and 6 are use for talking to the lens, well it's a one way talk, lens to camera, pin 5 is data and 6 is clock. But the fault could be anywhere. i.e could be a faulty aperture motor, say one of the older lenses has some oil build up on the aperture blades, (which happens quite a bit) this in turns causes extra load on the aperture motor, which can cause a slight burn out in part of the motor. which in turn could cause power surge when trying to set a specific aperture, which could drop power to the lens.

[alphaomega]

It is a shame that chmodx has had this problem with both his Sony cameras. I have now owned two A700 and two A350. Still has one each and one A700 now with my son and the second A350 with my wife. They have all been fitted with Sony, Tamron and at least one a Sigma 70-210 APO zoom. Neither the cameras nor the lenses have malfunctioned even once. That is of no consequence statistically but at least it proves that not all the Sony's are defective. The one thing I have noticed with Sony is their relative lack of firmware upgrades. When observing that the competitors mostly upgrade firmware to resolve problems I conclude that Sony are probably not as bad as some will make them out to be.

[Greg Beetham]

When Sony fixes the Macro flash system they screwed up, I give em a big smooch, and I'll say only nice things about them for at least a month...promise.
Greg

[theresa_n]

I have not had any problems but am using only one lens. Sorry I can't be of help.

[Dusty]

Well, I've not had any problems, and I've run Sony, Minolta, Konica-Minolta Sigma, Tamron and Quantaray lenses on my 350. Most of those lenses are older FF versions picked up cheaply on on flea-bay by people dumping older KM film cameras. I've used both manual and power-zoom lenses with no problem.

If I had the problems he had, and it being under warranty, I'd send my system to Sony first before I quit them.

Dusty