Canon 7D: No Autofocus! Dead! Kaput

Dead! I can’t focus with my “70-200”. What happened? Did the lens die? Did my Canon 7D die? I don’t know. But it’s dead and no auto-focus. The manual focus seems to be working. It works when “chimping” on the LCD. So it looks like it’s the auto part of the focus that doesn’t work.

Next lens on the camera, the auto-focus works. Relief! It’s either the lens or the combination of the camera and the lens. What’s wrong? I pull the backup camera, a Canon 30D that was very cheap and bought it just for those occasions, and the auto-focus doesn’t work either. Can’t blame the camera and now I can’t blame the combination lens/camera. Must be the lens. What’s wrong with my “beloved” 70-200? Is it dead? It’s still under warranty, but I don’t have a backup lens for it.

Sending it to Canon will easily take a month. I’m in Vancouver, the Canon repair center is just outside of Toronto, 5000km… Most of Canon’s people are in Vancouver with the CPS at the Olympics, it may take more than a month. Maybe I should clean the contacts? I get the alcohol, the swab, take the lens out, turn it upside down and then I notice the AF switch on the lens. It’s OFF! Move it back to ON. I must have moved it by accident, or during inserting it on the camera bag. Now it works.

The problem was an operator problem. The incompetent operator didn’t pay attention to what he was doing.